The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  She tried a move to the left, raising and banging down her timbrel on a knee, its taut skin drawn over a half-moon frame, the small metal links giving out the only music she would have, apart from the jingle of tiny bells at her ankles. The move was clumsy, awkward, not enticing in the least – and she had to entice beyond the fantasies of any man! Why did she ever think she could do this? Because she danced well the dances of her people? Those movements were restrained, eyes cast down, demure. They were not the movements of a Salome.

  Voices came from outside the door, and when it opened all considerations of performance disappeared in the shock of being in the same room as her enemy. Her hands instinctively reached for a weapon that was not there, and she saw Haakon cease his scratching and slip a hand to his side, twitching for the reassurance of an axe.

  This is the moment, she thought. They will see through these thin veils, not to the woman but to the body of their foe. They will pierce the Norseman’s disguise, call their guards, we will be overpowered, then subjected to the same horror they have been inflicting on Jean. This moment, now, as Giancarlo Cibo walks in, coughs, raises his handkerchief to his lips, sees …

  ‘Ah, Salome.’ There was a trace of liquid in the voice. ‘You I recognise, Princess. But who is your friend?’

  She was not Rebecca, daughter of Abraham, nor Beck, the boy warrior. She was an Italian whore who enticed with a dance. She was Salome. She had lived with disguises all her life. And she had watched men watch women.

  ‘Your Eminence.’ In her low curtsey, she made sure the loose-fitting veils around her breasts slipped forward. ‘Every Salome needs an executioner. How else am I to take the reward for my dance – the head of John the Baptist?’

  She sensed rather than saw Heinrich react to the words. Haakon was not moving a false hair under the German’s scrutiny, but he was not a man who could look insignificant. She leapt up, clashing the timbrel above her head, striking an elaborate pose, drawing all attention to her. Under her arm, beneath her paint-thickened lashes, her eyes found and held the bodyguard’s.

  ‘Really, he’s just here to make sure I get paid.’ Her voice had slipped into the street accent of the Veneto. ‘You’d be surprised how many try and cheat me, once they’ve had their … fun.’

  Another pose, this time some flesh shown at the thigh, the timbrel shaken level with the ground, tinkling around to finally rest at her hip.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised at all, my dear.’ The voice had a huskier quality to it now. ‘Alas, there is so much evil in the world. And does your executioner watch all the “fun”?’

  She raised the half-moon to her face, peered over the top of it, her eyes wide and blinking slowly.

  ‘Oh no. Gunter is discretion itself. He hears nothing, says nothing, sees nothing. Unless the client requires anything different, of course. Anything is possible, for a price. Anything.’

  She had reverted to the more refined accent of the dancer, with a hint of the knowing girl thrown in. Eyes downcast, she heard the cough again, and slippered feet moving away to the fireplace.

  ‘Maybe later. Variations always interest me.’ Cibo sat, while Heinrich stayed at the door. ‘But for now, my dear, shall we see if Salome can earn her reward?’

  She glanced at the Archbishop. He was leaning forward in his chair, his high forehead mottled by some internal heat, his fleshy, sensual lips damp and slightly parted. To his side, his arm stretched out towards an empty chair, seeming to rest on the table between them. To rest and not quite rest.

  Suddenly Beck saw why his hand hovered just above the wooden surface. It was moving up and down another hand. Cibo’s fingers were stroking the severed flesh of Anne Boleyn. As if she were there, and Archbishop and Queen held each other in anticipation of private entertainment. Beck saw the desire Cibo felt for her dance, but she also saw the far greater desire he felt for what was, and was not, beside him.

  Shivering, she placed one foot slowly in front of the other, the tiny bells jangling her progress. The little courage she’d found had vanished. She felt lumpen, unskilled, unequal to the task she’d set herself. Getting through the door of the house had been her first concern. Everything else was an invention of the moment, single actions and reactions dragging her forward.

  Why am I here, in this strange room, nearly naked? What did I think I could achieve with a dance? Why didn’t I listen to Haakon? What demon possessed me?

  She shivered again, to a tiny tinkle of bells. And then the answer rose before her in a name.

  Jean. I am here for Jean.

  They had watched Franchetto leave with ten of his men. That meant there were still twenty more somewhere in this house. They had no time to search against those odds. She had to make them bring her to Jean. Or bring Jean to her.

  A vision of her love lying hurt so close by replaced her fear with anger. Anger and love. Power to be harnessed for something else. For a dance, perhaps.

  It began with a gentle tapping of feet, a tucket of little bells, like a summons. An echo at the hand, the chiming of metal held in a wooden frame, that one hand raised swiftly to meet the other above the head, a sudden strike of the half-moon. Then a slow drumming of fingers, building up into a storm on a reed roof, hands lowered to pass before the veiled face, linger before the breasts, drift down over stomach, hip and thigh as if cool rain were flowing down in waves over too-hot flesh. Her head swaying now, rolling from side to side, and then all around, mouth open under the half-veil, eyelids nearly shut, the merest hint of light from the kohl-darkened eyes. A bare foot raised, toes pointing down, leading the leg out to the side. A slight spring onto that foot, the other raised behind, the timbrel running up the leg like a caress, a rhythmical fluttering now. A strike of the drum at the thigh and a piece of material freed, suddenly floating through the air, sailing like a silk javelin, to crumple and fold onto the sitting man’s shoulder.

  ‘One.’

  Cibo smiled as he spoke, running the cloth through his fingers, draping it finally over the hand beside him, his eyes feasting on the flesh revealed. It was a strong thigh, muscles rippling under the golden skin, and he imagined his nails running along it, from the dimple of the knee and up. The thought brought on a cough and the rosy silk darkened when he snatched it up to his mouth.

  The stamping now, a counterpoint to the drumming, bare feet resonating on the wooden floor. Another shot of rose through the air, the same target hit again, opposite shoulder.

  ‘Two.’

  Haakon heard Cibo speak but he didn’t look, his eyes held by the other thigh now revealed. He didn’t want to stare – this was his comrade, after all, Jean’s love, as he now knew – but the dancing form before him, hidden by the veils, had also become something else unto itself, and the rhythm of feet and hand, the harmonious jangle of the bells, all fused in his senses in a way he could not help. And he sensed that the stiff form of Heinrich von Solingen beside him suddenly relaxed, then stiffened again, the quality of the attention transformed.

  She was moving around the room, the percussion emphasised on every fourth beat, her feet touching the floor to spring away again. She never quite looked at the man in the chair, but she never quite looked away either, completely aware of him, of his attention on her, of a promise held out then slowly withdrawn, only to be offered again.

  They could not see the hesitation; she used it as a pause only between beats, but it gave her the time to slip one of the knots she’d tied at the back of her neck and one of the bindings there was loosed, held for matching moments of revelation and concealment before a breast was freed from its constraints and three men gasped for air in a room suddenly lacking it.

  Through the sounds of bare feet slapping the wooden floor, the harmonious jangle of metal at wrist and ankle, two voices were heard: Beck’s little groans as each silk flew free from her body, and the moan of ‘three’ that emerged from the Archbishop’s mouth, then a whispered ‘four’. The ‘five’ was mouthed only, yet seemed to echo round the room as po
werful as silent thought can be.

  She stood before him now, only the face and the waist still covered, and that by the smallest of rose patches held in place by a silken cord. She had placed her hand before it, and the timbrel was held in front of her, not quite concealing, not quite revealing, her breasts, like a Botticelli maiden rising from a shell. Cibo’s breathing was shallow, eyes trying to penetrate the last of the barriers.

  ‘More?’ she breathed. She was standing just before him, bent slightly over towards him. Peeling back the veil from her face, trailing it slowly into his lap, her voice emerged from behind it like oil. ‘Do you want more?’

  ‘More?’ he whispered. ‘Oh yes, much, much more.’ Then, raising his voice, he said, ‘Leave us. Leave us now.’

  And then it came to her. She didn’t think about it. She just spoke.

  ‘But what of my reward?’

  ‘Reward?’ The word distracted him and he sought her eyes. ‘What reward? You will be well paid. Afterwards.’

  ‘Not money. That’s for me, but what of Salome?’ She raised her arms above her head, joining them in an arc of hands and timbrel. ‘Salome wants her reward too. She wants a head.’ She leant in closer so that her breath was in his ear.

  ‘You don’t mean …’

  ‘Oh, but I do. My special treats work so much better if we play the scene for real. My … reward for you will be so much the greater. Surely, your servant here can go and drag some wretched cripple off the street? Or perhaps’ … she paused. ‘Perhaps in his own house, his Excellency has some lazy servant who has displeased him and deserves … punishment.’ She almost let her tongue touch him. ‘Pleasure after pain, don’t you think?’

  Cibo gasped at the familiar words. He had long given up the hope of any depravity shocking him. Yet this bewitching child had just done it! He smiled now, for Wittenberg had suddenly become the most interesting place he had ever visited.

  ‘A cripple? Some servant?’ He paused, clutching at the six fingers beside him. Then he laughed. ‘No. Nothing so common for my Salome. Heinrich?’

  ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Fetch me the prisoner here.’

  ‘The … prisoner, your Eminence?’

  ‘The Frenchman, Heinrich. My Salome requires a head before she finishes her performance. Lucky for me that we have one to offer her. No! No discussion. Fetch him here.’

  The German left and Beck gestured at Haakon. ‘Gunter here is a fine taker of heads.’

  ‘You have done this before?’ Cibo was unable to take his eyes from hers.

  ‘Oh, once or twice.’ She dropped the timbrel another fraction. ‘For very special clients.’

  ‘My dear,’ said the Archbishop of Siena, ‘you are the special one.’

  Haakon went outside and returned with a block and his axe, the weapon’s shape disguised in a piece of sacking. His mind whirled as much as his body shook. He had not thought it could come to this. Getting through the door had been the limit of his plotting, violence the only progression. What was going on now he didn’t understand. He just knew he had to be ready.

  Heinrich returned, alone.

  ‘Where is he?’ snapped his master.

  ‘My Lord, they are bringing him. But—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My Lord, you promised him to me.’ The German did not try to keep the petulance out of his voice.

  ‘Priorities, Heinrich. My Salome needs this gift more than you do. To bring her inspiration for the rest of her … performance. Is that not right, my child?’

  Beck’s eyes, which had been on the door since Heinrich’s entrance, flicked back to Cibo’s. She remembered just in time to flutter them.

  ‘Yes, my Herod. One gift for another.’

  ‘And here it is.’

  Of all the play acting she had done that day, the hardest was to keep her face blank now, as Jean’s naked body was dumped into the room by the two gaolers. There could not be any life in that mess of blood and shattered bone, burnt flesh, flayed skin. He lay like a marionette with strings severed, and the walk she had to make across to him was an agony of small, slow steps. She raised him gently by the clotted hair, and saw the blood at the mouth bubble with a little breath.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said softly. ‘This head will do. Better than any other.’

  The block was placed in the centre of the room, and Haakon, a tear forcing its way out of one eye, laid Jean’s head gently upon it. Cibo had come forward and was gazing down into the glazed eyes of the Frenchman. Cradled in his fingers, stroked as if it were a pet, was the hand of Anne Boleyn.

  ‘How fitting, Jean Rombaud, that you should die now in this way. And for my pleasure.’ He returned to his chair, laid the Queen’s hand down on the table, and said, ‘Strike away, headsman!’

  That final word woke Jean, as if someone were calling him, but he could not distinguish between this dream he was in and the one he’d left on the other side, for the people were much the same in both. He had been back in Montepulciano, his refuge, the full moon’s beams playing upon the beauty of Beck’s naked skin. Now, in this waking dream, she was above him again, nearly as naked, save for the thin cord around her waist. Her hair had grown though, and taken on a darker hue. Had so much time passed since he last saw her? Yet nothing could alter the quality of her loveliness.

  In this vision, Haakon stood before him too; even though he wore an executioner’s mask and black hair spilt from beneath it, it could only be the Norseman. Jean felt a momentary concern that Beck was naked in his presence, but then he saw the axe emerging from a sack and he knew his companion was there to end his pain at last. He began to look beyond the falling of the blade to a world where his dead awaited him.

  It was the axe. Heinrich had thought his unease came from being cheated of his prize – his enemy’s death at his hands alone. But when he saw the axe raised up he remembered immediately where he had seen it before. And he saw, through the slitted leather mask and the false black hair, to the Norse face beneath.

  ‘No!’

  Heinrich was standing on the other side of the room, behind his master’s chair, but his move forward was blocked by his master rising in excitement. For the dancer, at that exact moment, was removing the seventh of her silk veils.

  Beck pulled the cord free from her hips and found the gap she had created at one end for her fingers. She grasped the knot at the other end, then reached into the pocket of Haakon’s smock and removed a stone. At the same moment, the axe began its descent and the slingshot rose. Three swings had it whirling above her.

  ‘No!’ cried Heinrich again, but this time he did not move forward but grabbed Cibo, trying to pull them both behind the chair. The stone took him in the wrist under the hand that held his master’s struggling head, and he heard a bone snap there. They fell in a heap behind the inadequate shelter.

  The axe that had seemed to be moving straight down towards the block and the exposed neck changed directions in a sudden shift of shoulder and wrist. The first gaoler’s surprised look stayed on his face even as his head bounced onto the floor. The second managed a scream, but the back swing took him in the throat and cut it off.

  This is a wonderful dream, Jean thought. The best yet.

  While a second stone was retrieved from the pocket, in the small pause before rope and silk once again whirled in the air above them, Heinrich tipped the table over and increased their shelter by its width. He had managed to get his short sword out of its scabbard, despite the awkwardness of using the unfamiliar, unbroken hand. Cibo lay under him, racked by violent coughing, crimson running unchecked from his mouth.

  ‘Haakon! Grab Jean!’ Beck screamed.

  ‘One moment.’ The Norseman was striding towards the upturned table, axe held on high. ‘Something to settle first.’

  His journey across the room was interrupted by a new and not unfamiliar voice.

  ‘Ah brother! What a night we have had!’

  When Franchetto Cibo spoke these words from the doorway, he was look
ing back into the corridor and grinning at his bodyguard, Bruno-Luciano, who had surprised his master that night with a hitherto unrevealed depth of carnality. It was only after they were uttered that he turned back to enter, just as Heinrich bellowed, ‘Help us!’

  Franchetto only got the briefest glimpse of the strange scene before a naked woman stopped whirling something above her head and slammed the door on him. There was a key in the lock, rusted from disuse, and it took both her hands to turn it. It clicked just as someone crashed into the door and indistinct bellowing erupted from the other side.

  ‘Haakon!’ she yelled, and the Norseman now turned to her. ‘No time! Grab Jean, for the love of God! This door will not hold for long!’

  The Norseman could just see over the edge of the table. ‘Another time then,’ he said clearly, seeing the German’s eyes narrow, the hate mirrored back.

  Thrusting the shaft of his axe behind his back into the folds of his cloak positioned to act as a sling, he stooped and put his arms under the Frenchman’s body. It did not hang right when he lifted it, and he could not believe how light it was. The lifting obviously sent pain shooting through him, for Jean’s eyes suddenly opened and, in a distinct voice, he said, ‘Have a care, you great ox!’

  Haakon smiled down at him. ‘Welcome back, little man.’

  There were two crashings of wood then, one at the main door where a large body was hurled against it, one where another of Beck’s stones hurtled into the table, a finger’s width below where Heinrich had unwisely raised his head.

  ‘The door is giving,’ Beck called. ‘Where now?’

  There was one other door in the room, off to the left side of the fireplace. Haakon knew the back of the house lay in that direction and he could only hope all the hours of scouting there had not been in vain.

  ‘This way!’ he shouted with a confidence he did not feel, and threw the door open.