The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  The men, with a few scant hours of sleep behind them, had been hoping for a few hours more. But they knew better than to demur or grumble. His tracker, with a little more guile, knew how to ask the obvious question.

  ‘Master, there’s much forest back there, off the trail we have come down. How will we know where to begin?’

  Heinrich sneered. ‘Call yourself a hunter? We watch for a sign. A very obvious one.’ He looked at the bottle then hurled it against the trunk of a tree, shattering it. The dogs whimpered, snapped and snarled in their efforts to get away from the overpowering, cloying scent of pine. ‘When your hounds start behaving like that again, we’ll know we have arrived.’

  Heinrich jumped up into the saddle and dug in his heels. The horse galloped off and his men, grumbling louder now at the disappearing back, followed close behind.

  Surprisingly, perhaps, Jean was the first of the three to wake. It was not a true struggle to do so, no clambering from great depths, no lung-bursting trawl from the bottom of a sluggish sea. His sleep, as far as he could recall, had been dreamless, certainly untroubled by foes real or imaginary, and no sound drew him forth from the calm of it. It was not as if he could not have slept longer; a part of him, reluctant to stir, tried to draw closed the lashed curtains on the world. But need drove him awake.

  He looked for her as soon as his eyes ungummed and he saw her straight away, as someone had had the foresight to put her exactly where he would first glance. Sitting on a pillow beside his bed of boughs, fingers splayed out in that anticipatory way. It was the way she sat that convinced him on waking it was not all part of some relieving dream such as God sometimes sent the tormented. If it were, all of Anne would be there, talking to him as she had in the cell, comforting him. As it was, just the hand lay there.

  There was another woman there, a whole woman, sat at a table and humming while she crushed some dried herbs in a mortar, adding them to a pot that bubbled gently on the fireplace. A handsome woman, even at her great age, tall and graceful. She reached a hand behind her, brushing aside the long tress of iron hair that hung there, placing the fingers in the small of her back to rub while she stretched.

  He watched her until she became aware of it, at which instant she put down her stirring spoon and came across to him, laying one hand on his head and one on his heart.

  ‘How are you, son?’ Hanna said after a while.

  ‘Well,’ he replied. ‘But I smell a little strange.’

  She smiled. ‘You smell a lot better than you did when you came to me. I think the poisons are in my bandages now, not in your body. Here.’ She went and fetched a beaker of the broth she’d been stirring at the fire and watched as he sipped at it, holding it awkwardly between the few fingers still unbroken and unsplinted.

  ‘Will this make me sleep again?’ he asked, sniffing the aromatic steam.

  ‘Do you want it to?’ she replied.

  ‘Alas …’ He did not need to say more.

  ‘It will not. But it will give you the strength to be awake.’

  ‘In that case’ – he drained the beaker – ‘more, please.’

  She brought a beaker of her own and they sat for a few minutes in companionable silence, sipping. Finally, she said, ‘I do not want to know much, son. But this hand … are you about God’s work with it?’

  He took a moment to reply. ‘There are those who claim only they know the word of God. They would tell you we are not. But the holiest person ever I met gave me this hand from her own body, freely, asking for a promise as she gave it.’

  Hanna did not even glance at the hand, just said, ‘This person. I think she and I would have understood each other.’

  ‘I am certain of it.’

  The silence returned, as comfortable as before. Jean’s eyes grew clearer as the herbs within the draught began to take effect, so that when a tousled, boyish head thrust itself up from beneath a pile of sheepskins and blankets, he was fully able to take in the wonder of Beck’s yawning face.

  She smiled at him. ‘I have had the most wonderful dreams, Jean Rombaud.’

  ‘Then I am sorry to awaken you to this nightmare,’ he said, bowing a little.

  She was beside him in an instant. ‘This?’ She took his head in her hands. ‘This is the best dream of all.’

  And she kissed him tenderly.

  A huge thump announced that Haakon too had woken up and fallen from his perch.

  ‘Thor’s Hammer!’ he grunted, from the floor. ‘But I am hungry! How long have I slept? One, two hours?’

  ‘More like days, Norseman,’ laughed Jean, ‘but the rest of us got little. Your snores would make the angels flee paradise.’

  Hanna, on the others’ awakening, had disappeared, to return with loaves of solid, moist black bread, wheels of cheese, smoked sausages and dozens of eggs she’d simmered in another of her flavoursome broths. Haakon was distracted from his mock anger at Jean’s remark and his joy at the sight of the Frenchman’s return to consciousness by the plenteous food. He sat down and began to chew his way through platters of it, while the others ate as heartily if less conspicuously. Jean was immeasurably content to let Beck feed him.

  ‘How is it you live so well out here?’ Eating and talking caused a soft egg to shed its yolk down the front of Haakon’s golden beard. ‘I have never seen food like this in a forest before.’

  Hannah pushed some more eggs towards him. ‘I … help the local people and they reward me, that is all.’

  ‘But all this food?’ Jean turned his face away from Beck’s moving spoon. ‘This is a large reward. They will know you have visitors and, perhaps, others will ask them.’

  ‘They will not be able to tell much. No one ever comes up here, I always go to them. They have ways of finding me when I am needed, such as certain calls made by woodland birds that have never flown in the valley below. I hear, I go. Besides’ – she fetched some more broth – ‘they do not betray me to strangers. They talk to me of any danger.’

  Jean saw the concern that contorted the calm brow.

  ‘And what have these birds told you lately?’

  Hanna got up and moved to the entrance of the hut, stared out.

  ‘They sing of the hunter’s return.’ She turned back. ‘I do not want to send you away. I never saw a man more in need of rest and such skills as I have. But I do not want to see you caught by my over-kindness. And I do not think my distractions will hold them again for long.’

  ‘How much time do we have?’

  ‘They will be here by the middle of the afternoon. Perhaps a little sooner.’

  ‘Then this is a farewell feast?’ said Beck sadly.

  ‘It is.’

  There was a silence as Beck and Jean contemplated again the hard road recently travelled, the hardship of the road ahead.

  All except Haakon. For now, he desired to contemplate nothing more than the sausage before him. A sausage he was more than delighted to share when a thin but joyous Fenrir bounded into the clearing.

  There were four of them, all dressed in the hip-length coat and leggings of those who work the land. They stood silently at each end of the litter’s poles. Four more waited beside it.

  ‘They will take you till the forest ends. It is about a day’s march. There, some of their family will carry you for another day on to the border.’

  While she was talking, Hanna was pouring a liquid distilled from nettles onto Jean’s fresh bandages. He felt the cool slickness of it reach his skin and dissolve beyond that into his body. Again, the pain, which had grown greatly even in the little journey in Haakon’s arms down the forested hill to this rendezvous, began to dissipate.

  ‘Do you know where in France that border is, Hanna?’

  ‘Just above Lorraine. You will cross from the Duchy of Luxembourg. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know it. If we are lucky with roads and horses, we can be in the Loire five days later.’

  Hanna looked up, concern clear on her face. ‘You might not make it so far, Jean. Yo
u know this. I have done what I can, but your wounds …’ She sighed. ‘You need to rest for at least a month.’

  ‘And you know I cannot. For all our sakes, I cannot rest until this is done.’

  At a nod, Haakon laid him gently in the sling between the litter poles. Hanna turned to Beck standing anxiously nearby.

  ‘This bottle for the bandages.’ She handed it over. ‘And this one to drink before sleep and whenever the pain is great.’ She smiled. ‘Do not confuse the two.’

  Beck took a deep sniff of the contents of each. ‘I will not. Thank you.’

  ‘I have done little enough.’

  Beck put her arms around the older woman.

  ‘You have saved his life. It is a debt I cannot hope to repay.’

  A wrinkled hand reached up and tousled Beck’s curly raven hair.

  ‘Help him do what must be done and you will have repaid me tenfold.’

  When Jean was settled, Haakon took his place at the head of the little column. The three horses had been as well cared for as their masters and seemed set fair for the journey, nostrils flaring into the afternoon air. It was a brisk autumn day, but the cruel cold rain had stopped and the sun’s rays created avenues of light through the treed lanes ahead.

  Hanna came one more time to Jean’s side, made some final fussing adjustments to bandage and splint. A broken hand lifted for a moment to rest clumsily on the moving one.

  ‘Enough. You have done all you can, and I thank you.’

  She got stiffly to her feet. ‘It may not be enough.’

  ‘It will have to be.’

  ‘Go with God, Jean Rombaud.’

  Haakon, on a look from Jean, ordered Fenrir forward. The litter men followed, Jean swinging between them, their reliefs trailing behind. Beck brought up the rear.

  Hanna watched until long after the party had disappeared into the fading sun. Then, with a sigh, she began to retrace the trail to her hill. Alongside the Scots pine she scattered various substances gleaned from plant and beast. It would not confuse the hunting dogs for ever, but for a time. She knew that every second’s delay to the pursuit was vital. That knowledge she did not need to look for in the flames.

  TEN

  LAST STAND

  ‘Are you certain it is them?’

  ‘Certain, my Lord. Their dog has a distinctive howl and it went off to hunt a short time ago.’

  ‘So they have lost their ears and nose? Good.’

  It was one of the longer conversations Giancarlo Cibo had had for a week. He saved his strength for the trail and there was little to be said upon it. The fools had tried to make him remain behind, while they went after the hand; they would fetch it to him where he rested. Yet only he knew it wasn’t the hardships of the chase that brought the blood cascading to his lips, it was the absence of what he now knew he needed. He had to have her hand in his, resting on his chest, to halt the crimson flow. They might capture it and bring it in triumph back to Wittenberg, but he knew they would be bringing it back to a corpse.

  Even this much closer he felt better. Less than half a league ahead, they said, and he could confirm that, he felt the pull of it. So near now; and when it was his again he would never let it go and he would make no more mistakes. Instant death for those who had robbed him of it, as swift and unmistakable as a knife thrust in the heart. His taste for exotic pleasure had led him to delay. No more.

  He looked around at his men, slumped against trees, on the ground, snatching meagre mouthfuls of hard bread and dried meat from their satchels. Two thirds of them had fallen away during this chase deep into France, they or their mounts, leaving just these strongest fifteen. So he, the oldest and the sickest, had done well to keep up. To lead. But of course, if they did not have his weakness, they also did not have his motivation.

  Franchetto had again seemed as if dead, his huge body curled around in the position he had slept in since Marsheim. Now, without opening his eyes, he said to the tall German before them, ‘Then let us attack now. Let us end this and get back to the civilisation of Siena.’

  There was still a pretence that the men were under Franchetto’s command. Heinrich could never keep the contempt out of his voice when he paid lip service to this pretence.

  ‘They are awaiting your orders, my Lord.’

  Franchetto heard the tone, rose to glare into the destroyed face. Yet before he could speak, the soft voice, the silkiness frayed now, spoke first. ‘No orders. Creep down there, cudgel them in their blankets, take the hand. When you are sure you have it, slit their throats.’

  ‘My Lord.’

  Heinrich kicked and cursed his men to standing. It was early evening and they’d been hoping for a few hours’ sleep, but hearing that their quarry had been sighted and was within reach, even the most tired of them roused themselves and checked their weapons. The chase had gone on long enough. It was time for the kill.

  It was Fenrir’s quick success in hunting that saved them, his sudden return, rabbit in mouth, disturbing the soldier who had taken up a position astride the dog’s path. The wind came from behind the approaching hound so before he could smell the man he was upon him, seeing his sword glimmering in the light of the rising full moon.

  Rabbit dropped, dog leaping, a man’s cry of pain. They were all instantly awake under the willow by the little pool where exhaustion from the last three days’ riding without sleep had dropped them. Jean it was who’d suggested they spend the few hours till moonrise there, knowing there was only this little shelter between them and the crossroads, if they were to avoid the village, craving this little rest to give him strength for the final stage of the journey.

  Dulled senses had not warned him that their pursuers were so close.

  Haakon rolled from a sleeping position to his feet in an instant, his axe clutched in his hands. Beck was on her knees, a stone already fitted to sling, leather and rope whirling as Cibo’s guard burst screaming from his shelter in the tree line, Fenrir’s jaws clamped onto his arm.

  ‘Take them now!’ came Heinrich’s cry as another man emerged and fell, a stone lodged in his forehead, and the rest of his men burst from cover. He himself ran for the one position he knew had not been filled yet – the road out of the valley.

  It was eighty paces from the tree line to their clearing and Haakon, under cover of the stones, used the scant time to pick up Jean and hurl him over a horse. Jean’s scream of agony was drowned in the war yells of the approaching guards. Haakon was astride his own horse in a moment.

  ‘Beck, to me!’ he cried, thrusting his axe into the sling of his cloak, spurring his animal without waiting to see the result of his cry. He had seen something else. A large man running to block the exit from the little valley.

  With one hand on his own horse and one on the rein of the horse that bore Jean, Haakon had no weapon other than speed. Heinrich was swept aside by the rush of horses and man. Hurling himself at the horse that followed, the German grasped at the reins for an instant, but Beck hit him hard on his broken wrist and the sudden sharp pain caused him to let go.

  ‘After them!’ he raged, spitting mud at their receding backs.

  The horses galloped towards a bridge that lay downhill, spanning a stretch of river ribboned in silver moonlight, swollen now by the autumn’s near incessant dowsings. Glancing back the three hundred paces to the little outcrop, Haakon could see the first of the guards emerge from the defile. They did not ride down yet, gathered their strength. He reined up on the bridge.

  ‘How far to this village, Jean?’

  ‘It is over the next hill, the crossroads a league beyond. We are so close.’

  ‘They will catch us in minutes,’ the Norseman said.

  Beck, looking back, nodded. ‘We will have to make our stand here then.’ She made to get down from her horse.

  Haakon spoke as he dismounted. ‘We will not. I will.’ Their eyes met, halting her protest. ‘There is no time to argue about this. The river is wide but this bridge is narrow. I can hold them here fo
r a while. Long enough, perhaps.’

  Jean, who had somehow managed to wriggle around so that he was astride the pack horse, looked down and said, ‘No, Haakon. Your loyalty does not extend to dying here alone.’

  ‘Who said anything about dying? And if I do, what better way than against impossible odds with my axe in my hand and my war hound at my side? What a story it will make, like one of the old tales. The Valkyrie will have to bear me to Valhalla at the end of it, that’s for certain.’

  Jean could not help but smile, though something seemed to catch in his throat.

  ‘You truly are a pagan, Norseman.’

  Haakon returned the smile. ‘This from a man who seeks to bury a hand at a crossroads.’

  Fenrir snarled. They could hear the shouts from the hill, the first men riding down, hunters’ delighted cries for a quarry still in sight. The gleam of the impending fight shone in the dog’s strange square eyes as well as in his master’s.

  ‘Ride, now, or you make what I do here in vain.’

  Haakon swiftly slipped on the metal undershirt and breastplate he had bought at Munster. The helmet rose to cover his flowing gold locks, a strip of metal over the nose.

  ‘We will try to honour your gift.’ Beck turned to grab the reins of Jean’s horse. ‘As Januc would say, Allah protect you.’

  ‘Januc.’ Haakon’s eyes darkened for a moment, then cleared with a smile. ‘You know, you can’t blame him. I’m glad at least one of us remained true to the mercenary code. All this self-sacrifice is hard on the purse.’

  ‘Hoch, hoch!’ Jean called out as Beck, angrily brushing a tear off her cheek, led him away.

  Haakon stood at the bridge’s centre, his axe inverted before him, its head resting on the ground, his huge hands lightly on the butt. As the hoof beats disappeared behind him, the ones before him slowed down.