The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘That we cannot do,’ she said.

  ‘Why is that? It was your suggestion,’ protested Orlando.

  ‘We need not proceed by way of slaughter when we might more profitably capture these men and offer them for ransom,’ she answered.

  Hemminges snorted and turned about in frustration like a dog chasing his tail. He gestured to Aemilia. ‘You are run mad. Fight mounted men and kill them is task enough to make proud Hercules blanch, but take them without harming them? And without them harming you in the taking? Impossible. You invite death upon yourself.’ He threw up his hands. ‘How do you propose to manage this feat?’

  Orlando, on whose face a knowing smile ever threatened to play, was now watching the match before him with open delight, the promised arrival of a dozen soldiers not enough to distract from the argument immediately before him. Aemilia’s smile came on to join his as she too crossed her arms before Hemminges.

  ‘I’ve no proposal at all. Yet I have heard it said, it is a wise man knows how to take the experience of others and use it to his own ends. You are our general, Master Russell. You devise our plan,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve enough of this fooling,’ said Hemminges. ‘To the hill, there. God willing, armed men shall knock sense into both of you.’

  He strode away, Orlando, Aemilia and a still silent William following hard on his heels.

  Our doubts are traitors

  Aemilia was huddled with the rest on the hill while they waited for the men sent out to scout to return and make report. The mood was tense and manifested itself in silence and short tempers. All peered out across the woods, straining to see either their fellows return or the pennants fluttering on the lances of the soldiers that would presage grim fighting and death.

  Aemilia felt that tension too, her hand tight upon the small dagger that was her only weapon, but it was mixed with excitement. The air held a crisp scent she had not noted before, the sky’s grey was not uniform but streaked with shades and cut with sharp blue, the sound of the wind in the trees was loud in her ears. She felt the danger of the moment and against that feeling life stood out in sharp relief. The routine pleasures of the palace could not compare.

  ‘Sebastian,’ said Hemminges in a low voice and beckoned her aside. The two moved to a secluded place near the centre of the circle that the outlaws had formed on top of the hill. They crouched by a tree out of earshot of the others.

  ‘Master Russell,’ Aemilia asked, ‘have the scouts reported?’

  ‘No,’ said Hemminges. His solidity and his sternness steadied her. She wondered if he knew the effect that he had on others, the calmness that standing by him brought, as if his self-control was a rock whose lee harboured ships from the tossing seas. She’d watched him pass by young Tommasso and by a simple hand on the boy’s shoulder, steady him. She looked on him with admiration.

  ‘Do not plead to me with your eyes, Aemilia,’ he said, mistaking her look for continuation of their earlier argument. ‘I have not come to tell you how we might make the impossible possible but to talk of how we three might yet escape.’

  ‘Escape?’ protested Aemilia. ‘To where? For what?’

  Hemminges dragged his hand through his hair and chewed at his cheek. He put a clenched fist against the tree trunk to steady himself in his squat.

  ‘The Duke has sent his soldiers against us. We cannot tarry here to play at outlaws. The game is run, the playing’s done and we must make our way back to your father’s palace.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Aemilia. Hemminges lifted his head at her sharp tone. ‘Nothing has changed to make my return possible.’

  ‘Nothing? Are armed men nothing? Why speak of “possible”? Our return is a necessity.’

  ‘If the troop attack now then it is too late to show myself for who I am. If they do not, then it matters not.’

  ‘If they do not then we should be away.’ The frustration and fear for her safety was writ on Hemminges’ face, clear in every line that dug its way across his brow and lips. ‘By God, why will no one heed me when I say to run?’

  How fortunate she was, she thought, to have someone care for her safety, who kept himself in danger’s way rather than leave her to her own courses. She touched his arm and felt him lean into it for an instant before he shied away, looking about to see if they were watched. She drew a breath and stilled herself, as she would do approaching a skittish horse she wished to tame. He was too cautious and for all his dear concern she was tired of being a creature in the care of others; she did not wish to be carried away but to hold the reins.

  ‘List to me, Master Russell. You say it is a thing impossible to take my father’s men and ransom them. I say it is not, that it is impossible it be so. I’ll not see those men slaughtered. What good would killing them do? Then would my father simply send more men and more and they would be brutal, foreign, caring not for propriety or the law of arms. We’d kill a dog, we’d loose a wolf. No, I will not see these men die. There will be among them some that I have known since my birth. I will not see them killed to preserve my freedom. Yet free I must be, and will be. Tell me then how I may solve this puzzle if not by demanding that the impossible be done? And list, oh list, these men taken, ransomed, have we not opened up a way to grasp my father’s thoughts? Into that opening I may send the image of myself as mistress of his realm. I know he does not love Valentine as I do but it is not that which keeps him from blessing our marriage.’

  ‘What then?’ said Hemminges. His doubts about her reasoning were not hidden; he was a plain, honest soldier, truly, but she would win him round as she would win her father.

  ‘My father’s grandsire was the first to hold his land and title. They say he was a knight most fine, most honoured, thrice renowned: for skill in arms, for manly chivalry and for piety. My father’s father died most bravely fighting the Turk at Lepanto. These two giants cast their shadow over my father’s rule and set his qualities in the shade. He sees them watching him and senses them judging him. He fears to be the first to lose what they have won. He doubts that Valentine can defend his lands.’

  And is he wrong in that?’

  ‘No. He is wrong in thinking that it falls to Valentine alone to meet that duty.’

  ‘Who else, then?’

  ‘Me.’ At his look she raised her voice. ‘Stop your scoffing, Master Russell. I will be bold and resolute and prove my worth in this exploit, by taking his men and sending them back to him unarmed and unharmed.’

  ‘Fine intent. The means to it are wanting.’

  ‘There I turn to you, Master Russell. Help me. I will do this, whether you will or no. Help me, I beg of you. Give me this.’

  Hemminges shook his head and turned to look at Valentine, huddled nearby but watching him talk to Aemilia.

  William watched all three and a fourth, Orlando, whose own eyes circled over the ground beyond the hill, to Valentine, to William and to the two crouched by the tree. What are you thinking? William wondered and caught himself. That is the first care for another’s motives that I have had in the fortnight since – he struggled still to name Isabella’s death, even in thought. To close his eyes was to see again that dark, foul room where she had screamed in pain for a seeming eternity, to feel again the rage and frustration of her friends’ abandonment of her in her hour of need. What had he gained only to lose it? A single summer they had had. Oh, summer’s lease has all too short a date.

  Hemminges had demanded of him last night why he should be so destroyed by Isabella’s death but he had no answer to give.

  ‘You who have such power to understand others’ thoughts and feelings? How is it you are so confounded by your own?’

  ‘I do not know, John. I do not know. I see the workings of their souls but they do not touch me. Their motions I grasp in the ventricle of my brain but they’ve no conjunction with my heart. I am a mirror, the shape and form reproducing but not the heat or breath within.’

  ‘A poet’s answer that flatters the speaker and leaves his frie
nds bereft, saving your art.’

  He saw how angry Hemminges was with him but it touched him not. If he felt anything now it was not concern for his friend but rage, a sudden rage that Hemminges should allow himself to be so gulled by this girl, moved, manipulated like a puppet to do her bidding. And for what? To serve her in the wooing of that overweening milksop, that antic, lisping, affecting fantasticoe Valentine, that slop of poetry, doling out his suffering in metrical feet. He’d listened to the man complain, mangle Dante, batter words as if they were iron to be beaten into shape and in two nights he’d had his fill. Help her to him? Help their false, shambling semblance of a love? Fie on it, he’d none of it. That was not the story he would write. A different cast, a different plot, a different lesson learned, all changed by but a line here, a line there. He might change it all if he willed it.

  William blew out his cheeks, and felt some of the knotted tension that had built within him as he thought of Valentine disappearing on the breeze. How storm-tossed is my mind; one moment becalmed, bereft of motion, the next blown onto rocks I did not know were there. My love for Isabella was the star that stopped my bark from wandering, the compass within, the fixed mark of my understanding. Her death has brought a dropping fog, as black as Acheron, over my mind.

  Ludovico crept up to William.

  ‘I do not like this waiting, Adam,’ he whispered.

  William shrugged. ‘That’s all there is to life, Ludovico. A long wait for the grave.’

  ‘You know this Master Russell that we should follow his orders?’ asked Ludovico.

  ‘I know no man, least of all myself,’ answered William. He turned. ‘Who knows anyone, truly? Look at you now. Ludovico who tells us he is from Ferrara but who speaks with a Roman accent. Ludovico the farmer who walks with the bow legs of a horseman. Ludovico the simple man who asks so many questions. What do I know of you, Ludovico?’

  ‘There is no need to doubt me friend, Adam,’ protested Ludovico. At least I am not so prideful as to let my fear hide itself in anger at another.’

  William gestured. ‘If you want to know Master Russell’s plans, enquire of him yourself.’

  Hemminges had risen from his crouch by the girl’s side and walked to where he could see out over the woods below. Ludovico shook his head and crept away from both. William turned back and saw Valentine slip in beside the girl. Orlando, William saw, watched them still.

  At the previous night’s revels, Valentine had flattered Petro the priest, crushed away his yawns at the man’s stories and topped up his chalice to the brim until the moment had come to ask him if he would be willing to perform a wedding. He was, and boasted of a ruined church not far by, still consecrate, where it might be done. Petro’s curiosity to know the intended bride and groom he’d waved away as best he could. It was merely the principle that he wished to establish. This, Petro had not liked.

  ‘A hypothecal marriage has little promise in it, mark you. It is a thing incontro— incontest— uncontist— not to be denied that for success in conjugation there must be two.’

  The priest had then held up two fat and filthy fingers, stared intently at them, moving them from one side of his great wall of nose to the other and lifting and raising one until he was certain that there were indeed only two fingers there despite the doubtful evidence of his drunken gaze. Not many minutes later he had fallen into sottish slumber and did not stir even as the dancing began.

  That morning Valentine had been at him again before his hammering head had yet been clear, to confirm the truth of the drunken tale of the abandoned church. To stop the pestering youth the priest had taken him to visit it, not an hour’s walk from the outlaws’ camp. The two had returned to find the camp in the fevered expectation of assault.

  ‘Aemilia,’ Valentine began. She gave him a warning look and he huffed but carried on with, ‘Sebastian, we must away...’

  She clutched his sleeve. ‘Not yet, Valentine, not yet, but soon. There is a plan, no more than a thought but if it come to fruition, then we may return to my father as man and wife.’

  ‘Let it be so,’ said Valentine. ‘Do you still wish the match?’

  Aemilia made to answer and found herself hesitating. In his question he showed himself again soft and tender to her will, a quality she’d found loving at the court, but it savoured now of a weakness. She’d taken for grief his upset at his exile but he had clung to it and clung to it still, to his unmanning. And worst of all was this Adam. The madman had been at Valentine as a hornet since first they met, ever stinging or threatening so – this pursuit the worse for coming from a lunatic’s mouth, for though what he said was madness yet there was meaning in it. Aemilia had thought ill of the cruelly mocking Adam but each of his mocks had brought her back to Valentine’s failings. She saw those failings mirrored. Master Russell did not speak of it for others to hear, but by his vinegar regard also showed his contempt for the soft-handed Valentine. His cold glances crushed the tender poet. Nor did Valentine’s lustre of the palace still shine so brightly when set against Orlando’s. There was a man of action and of romance too. He did not only speak of the freedoms of the woods, he lived them. Where he saw suffering he acted. Valentine wallowed.

  She was not sure she wanted the same things now she had desired in the palace.

  She saw his hope in the question, though, and was moved by it. His virtue was not strength. So be it, she knew that already. Strength was her virtue and she would show it now, by being firm of purpose.

  ‘I do, I will.’

  ‘They are not coming,’ said Orlando.

  Hemminges rose and walked over to him, aware of all the eyes that followed him. He looked briefly at William and then addressed Orlando.

  ‘I have a plan.’

  ‘To capture the Duke’s men?’

  ‘If it be God’s will, so.’

  ‘If it be so then shall we sing: Non nobis, sed te Deum. If it be not, then a dirge of different measure.’

  Behind Hemminges and Orlando, Aemilia smiled the giddy smile of victory, innocent of its costs. Valentine crossed himself in fear and was not the only one among the outlaws to do so.

  Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword

  ‘The scout has found a trail but dared not go to its end,’ said the corporal.

  ‘The villains have sent out scouts of their own.’

  ‘Ah hah,’ said Oldcastle. ‘Then we have stirred the hornets’ nest have we not?’

  ‘To what end, Sir Nicholas, to what end?’

  There was a question that Oldcastle struggled to answer even to himself. His hesitation brought out much distemper in the corporal.

  ‘Sir Nicholas, I must know your stratagem, sir,’ the corporal stated, standing to attention within Oldcastle’s cramped tent to lend dignity to his demand. ‘By the Duke’s command we are to meet with the Count Claudio’s baggage two days from now. I must know your plan, Sir Nicholas, and how we will accomplish all that is asked of us.’

  ‘It has not changed,’ said Oldcastle as airily as he might.

  ‘How not? When the situation is now changed.’

  ‘Is it? Is it?’ said Oldcastle with a questing look. If he’d hoped to inspire self-doubt in the corporal he failed.

  ‘Yes,’ came the answer, and Oldcastle noticed that he was no longer being given his title, however false that title was. Desperate measures were called for.

  ‘We have seen we are near their camp,’ he said. ‘As I told you, we need only wait for the arrival of my man John Russell. He and I have, in preparation for this moment, laid our plans against it. We wait only for the hour before dawn. At that time, he will make his way from the enemy’s lodgement and we two shall meet and he will discover to me how the enemy are disposed, how armed, how numbered and all pertaining to the necessaries of their defeat. Have patience, Corporal. You are too liverish in your judgement.’

  The corporal’s colour gave support to Oldcastle’s own judgement, for he was red and angry.

  ‘And how, Sir Ni
cholas, will your man find his way to you? In the darkness before dawn? Without prior discussion?’

  ‘That is a matter of secrecy between he and I,’ said Oldcastle haughtily.

  ‘Sir Nicholas, I do doubt the merit of this plan. I am patient for all you say I am not. Sir Nicholas, till dawn tomorrow shall I wait but, I say this, and I say it, Sir Nicholas, without intent of dishonour to you, saving your honour, if you have not made parley with your Master Russell by that hour then I shall report as much to the Duke.’

  Oldcastle pushed his chin up as high as the low tent would allow him. ‘Do so, Corporal. And I have no doubt that when the dawn breaks I shall deserve of you apology.’

  ‘You shall have it.’

  The corporal drew himself tighter still, his chin tilted up too so that it would have seemed to one watching that the two men now invoked the witness of the gods on their challenge. The corporal saluted and stamped from the tent. Oldcastle collapsed into his seat. God’s will, what a tangled web he found himself in. Still, he’d bought himself an hour, between setting out to meet Hemminges and the discovery that he’d no plan at all but had used that dark hour before dawn to make himself scarce. It was a small window of hope but it must serve to carry all his bulk.

  He called for Dionisio and asked the man to pack him a small bag of food. The man looked at him as Oldcastle explained that it was to sustain him in his wait for Master Russell’s arrival.

  ‘I should, perhaps, Sir Nicholas, make certain that the packing contains enough to sustain you quite some while?’

  ‘That seems sensible,’ said Oldcastle. ‘One cannot be certain how long the wait.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so,’ said Dionisio.

  Act Four

  Verona and woods in the Veneto, March 1586

  Mischief, thou art afoot

  The Veneto

  Hemminges crept through the dark of night, edging himself closer to the light of the soldiers’ fire. He peered with one eye closed so that the flare of the flames would not leave him blind in the darkness that would follow. It was a small watch the soldiers had set, befitting their small number. One man walked near where the horses were tied, another by the lodgement’s north side and the last to the south. All three walked swiftly to their posts, looked out and then returned again to the fire to warm themselves. They thought themselves safe, they were the hunters not the hunted, and they lacked caution in the result.