The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Valentine at Adam’s unwelcome interruption.

  William smiled at him, moved past Aemilia standing by the door and walked down the aisle. Two goats had pushed through a narrow hole in the far wall of the church where once, perhaps, a door had stood but where now the stones hung precariously and ivy wrapped its way from outside over the lintel and up the inward part of the wall towards the ceiling. He walked towards the goats making little clicking noises and holding out his hand as if to feed them. As he walked he sang:

  How should I your true love know

  From another one?

  By his cockle hat and staff,

  And his sandal shoon.

  ‘I don’t want to get married,’ said Aemilia, bringing her attention back from the madman to the lover.

  Valentine’s hopeful smile diminished even as his eyes grew wide. His lip trembling, he grasped Aemilia’s shoulders and gazed at her. ‘Do not say I have lost you, Aemilia.’

  Aemilia thought he looked foolish, like a mournful horse. She shook her head. She did not want to deal with this now, with Valentine and his pleading, with all the thoughts that his bargaining would throw up, with her guilty remembrance of the passionate embraces of the night. She sought to deflect him.

  ‘Wed here? In a church that is more cattle-byre than consecrate chamber?’

  ‘What does it matter where we marry? It is the ceremony that concerns us, all else is nothing.’

  Aemilia could see that Valentine was not easily to be diverted. Her head ached, her heart felt too cramped for its casing. These were the least desired circumstances in the world. William had sat himself down nearby on the shattered remains of a pew to watch their debate and he began a new song as Valentine’s pleading grew to a pitch.

  By Gis and by Saint Charity,

  Alack, and fie for shame!

  Young men will do’t, if they come to’t;

  By cock, they are to blame.

  Quoth she, before you tumbled me,

  You promised me to wed.

  ‘Be quiet,’ shouted Aemilia to William, desperate for a moment of quiet in which to think her way out of this bind. ‘Are all men fools?’

  ‘Not all, Madonna,’ answered William. ‘And even among those that are, not all are equal. Why fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings, the husbands the bigger.’

  Aemilia threw up her hands. ‘It is too early for such merriment. I will see you at the camp, Valentine.’

  He reached out and grasped her arm. ‘No, Aemilia, no.’

  He turned her to look on him. Aemilia sought out other sights, she didn’t want this now. She didn’t want to have decision thrust on her.

  ‘I love you,’ said Valentine. His voice was stretched thin with the urgency of its pleading. I love you, world without end, and I wish to marry you. You urged me to that very thing. You demanded that I ask it of your father and, doing so, I was cast out. Now we may make it a fond reality. Here, now. Let us be married.’

  ‘Where is speeding Hymen, Valentine?’ called out William. ‘For shame, be more temperate. Do they not say a hasty marriage seldom proves well?’

  ‘Oh, Aemilia,’ pleaded Valentine, ignoring his chorus, ‘let not desire wait on reason but, loving me, be joined with me.’

  Aemilia tried to shake off his arm but his grip was as insistent as his voice. She put her hand down to pull his arm from hers and saw his slender figure beneath its soiled silk shirt: it brought her back to another man’s arm that had held hers tight with passion of a different kind that yesternight. Shame and guilt burst their banks to cover over all her anger and put in their place a melancholy. She ceased her struggle and lifted a hand to his face, gentle on his cheek. ‘We are changed, altered. I am not the woman that I was when I walked into these woods. My desires now are strange to me.’

  ‘I care not.’ He clutched at the hand that held him and pressed it to his cheek. ‘Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.’

  ‘Oh good, good, the best I have yet heard from you,’ said William from his pew.

  ‘I need to think, Valentine,’ said Aemilia. ‘Give me time to think.’

  ‘Oh that’s never good,’ said William. ‘No love story begins with that injunction from a lady’s lips.’

  ‘Will you be quiet, Adam,’ demanded Valentine. He turned back to Aemilia and got down on to one knee and turned his grasp upon her arm into a cradling of her hand with his. ‘I love you. Let us be married this day, before the sun is at its highest, let us be joined together and whatever dangers come, whatever challenges we face, let us face them together.’

  Aemilia stared down at Valentine. She had once thought him the bravest thing in her life but his gilt was all washed away now. His beautiful hair hung in greasy locks across his brow and his large eyes, into which she had once wished to dive and swim forever, now seemed to her to resemble the empty docility of a cow. He had been tested in the fire and found wanting. Or worse, she had been forged anew in that same fire and their shapes no longer fitted.

  ‘No, Valentine,’ she said. ‘I do not wish it.’

  ‘You do not? It is the answer to all our woes. Confront your father with the marriage done and none but a churl could spurn his daughter and new-made son then.’

  ‘I do not love you.’

  There was a terrible moment of silence that followed these words. Then came a rising of spirit in Valentine, and he rose and roared at Aemilia who backed away from his sudden fury.

  ‘How dare you? How dare you abandon me now? I have given all for you. All. All. To be cast away again as if some fish caught in sport but now too small for your consumption. I will not be so.’ His high, angry voice broke and cracked as if in sympathy with his heart and his last words were racked from him as he shook his fist at the woman he loved and who no longer loved him. Inconstant woman, was I but a toy to play with?’

  And damned be him that first cries,

  ‘Hold, enough!’

  A sharp command barked out across the church: ‘Enough!’

  Hemminges appeared in the doorway, his face a grey, swirling sea of anger. Beside him stood Oldcastle, looking winded and with a sheen of sweat that belied the coldness of the day, and Dionisio, seemingly serene as ever. Hemminges cast a basilisk eye across the scene: Valentine frozen by his shout, fist still raised in anger; Aemilia backed against the wall but staring defiantly at her former lover; Petro stirring by the altar; and William watching it all with a twist of laughter on his lips.

  ‘No need for concern, John,’ called William. ‘I feared you would be late for a wedding but it seems you arrive in time for a funeral.’

  Hemminges looked to Valentine.

  ‘What is this madness, Valentine?’

  At Hemminges’ words Valentine’s rough torrent of feeling that had forced itself out as anger burst forth anew in gouts of tears. Valentine’s hands came up to bury his face, he fell back to his knees and shuffled on them towards Aemilia.

  ‘Forgive me, Aemilia,’ he cried from the floor, ‘forgive me. Oh let us still be married before it is too late.’

  Aemilia turned back to him. Behind the weeping Valentine, William had stirred from his seat and was looking intently at the kneeling man. Aemilia took a few steps towards Valentine. She looked at him with pity. ‘What is there to forgive? Valentine. I am sorry. I thought there could be more to us but I was wrong. I need more strength than you can offer. I... I am sorry. Come, Valentine, take heart, all will be well.’

  Valentine fell to the floor. Exasperation warred with guilt within Aemilia. She made to leave.

  Orlando appeared at the door, took in the scene and clucked in disappointment. ‘It seems such a shame to waste all of dear Valentine’s preparation. We have priest, church and bride. If the groom is not to your liking, will you take me in his stead?’

  ‘You?’ said Hemminges and Aemilia in the same instant. Orlando patted Hemminges on the shoulder as he passed him and walked towards Aemilia.
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  ‘I admit it has been a rough wooing but what are husband and wife but partners in the enterprise of life? If we may find common theme amidst disaster, how much more might we discover when the sweet time of life is with us?’

  He drew level with Aemilia and cupped her chin. ‘Have we not shown ourselves to be well suited to enterprises and stratagems of great boldness and rare merit? Besides I think you like my look, I know that I like yours.’

  ‘Marry a vagabond thief?’ said Hemminges from behind.

  ‘Oh, I am no vagabond but a count, unfairly deprived of my land and title by a villainous brother, my birth as noble as yours. Adam here can vouch to that story,’ he answered, without taking his eye from Aemilia. ‘And if I am thief, then so is the Lady Aemilia, for she has stolen my heart.’

  He bent to take a kiss from her lips but she twisted away to look towards William, who sat still on his broken pew but now with Dionisio and Oldcastle sat beside him. The little servant had unfolded a handkerchief on which a small round of cheese and some dry bread sat at which he and Oldcastle picked as they watched Orlando at his love-making.

  ‘Adam can vouch? Vouch to what?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes, that I too should like to know.’ Hemminges had, over the last days, oft told himself that he was no true suitor to Aemilia. They stood in too great distance from each other; the player and the lady, only in a ballad does that end well. It came as a bitter potion swallowed then to see the outlaw king Orlando’s assumption of the role and to have it paraded before him. More galling yet, to recognise in Orlando’s playing of it the belief that it would be well received. Rather than look on his own bright jealousy Hemminges looked instead at a darker object, William.

  Valentine stood again and tried to push past Orlando. ‘For God’s sake, Aemilia. You cannot be so moon-mad as to want this knave. I beg you, Aemilia, the time is short. Make good your promise to me. Let us be married.’

  He gave a little groan of desperation. Aemilia waved him down and kept her look on William but he was looking in his turn at Valentine and his head was tilted in a question.

  Vouch for what?’ Aemilia repeated.

  William suddenly shot from his seat and ran from the church. Aemilia threw up her hands.

  ‘It is not I that am run moon-mad, but all the men here.’

  Luca appeared at the door with Jacopo by his side, both men’s faces pale.

  ‘Orlando, Lady Aemilia, armed men are coming, a-horseback.’ He pointed out the door. Hemminges strode to the entrance and saw a troop of mounted men spreading out across the clearing, the Duke and Father Thornhill and a third man, heavy-set, dark-featured and menacing, in the van. Aemilia ran over to where Hemminges stood and saw some of the men dismounting by the trees, tie off their horses, draw their swords and advance.

  Valentine fell again to his knees.

  ‘Oh, forgive me,’ he moaned.

  My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse

  Aemilia swung angrily round to confront Valentine.

  ‘“Too late,” you said. You knew of this? This is your doing?’

  ‘There is still time,’ said Valentine, looking up at her. ‘Let us be married, now, in haste.’

  His eyes were wild beneath their red and tearful front and he once again shuffled forward on his knees. Behind him Petro had scrambled to the wall and was peering through a gap in the broken stonework at the advancing men. He began to cross himself and moan.

  ‘Oh Lord Christ, forgive us our sins.’

  Hemminges dragged Aemilia back into the church and pushed Jacopo along with him.

  ‘Quickly, out the back, quickly. Where is Dionisio?’

  Hemminges was looking about but could see no sign of William or Dionisio. He hurried towards the broken doorway where William had been last. Reaching it he peered round the upright of the door and quickly pulled his head back as William came swiftly back round the corner. His face was masked in blood from a shallow cut across his brow.

  ‘No escape there, friend John,’ said William breathlessly as he pressed his sleeve against the cut. Behind him were two of the mounted men turning the corner of the church to hem them in from that direction.

  ‘Damn it,’ Hemminges growled. ‘Where is Dionisio?’

  ‘Draw our swords,’ said Aemilia from behind him. ‘Let us sell our lives bravely.’

  Hemminges rolled his eyes and looked about him for some other exit. He felt Oldcastle tap him on the shoulder and turned to see Orlando backing down the nave towards him. There in the entrance of the church stood the Duke, face red, hair wild.

  ‘Aemilia!’ he roared. ‘Come here now!’

  They retreated into the chancel. Hemminges, Orlando and Aemilia had their blades out, a pitiful defence made more so by the arrival at the rear of the church of men with crossbows. Oldcastle, moving with the swiftness that the terror of these occasions granted him, had scurried to crouch behind the broken altar from where he now tried to beckon William down to join him. William was too occupied with watching the newly arrived Duke Leonardo striding down the nave towards them. He stood with a seeming unconcern at the various swords, quarrels and daggers pointed in his direction. His calm demeanour was a studied contrast to that of Valentine, who cowered almost at the feet of Orlando and Aemilia. Nor had Petro, Luca and Jacopo shown much defiance. The three had backed up as far against the side of the chancel as the rough, cracked stone allowed and Petro now stood with hands clasped in prayer, eyes shut, lips mouthing sacred words as Luca and Jacopo muttered profane ones beside him.

  The Duke stopped his advance half-way down the nave and repeated his command, sounding more tired than angry. His face was drawn, the skin purple beneath his eyes where sleep had given them an ill colour.

  Aemilia, for God’s sake, put down that sword and come here.’

  ‘No,’ she replied and was glad to hear her voice did not betray by its own tremor the quaking within her bosom.

  Oldcastle judged the moment ripe to make a pleading on his own account. He pushed his head above the altar’s parapet. ‘Duke Leonardo, I thank God you are here. Such a deal of trouble there has been.’

  He got no further, the Duke’s roar cut him off. ‘Silence! Traitor, dissembler, I shall deal with you in your turn.’

  ‘This is most unjust, Duke Leonardo,’ Oldcastle moaned as he sank back below the stone.

  ‘Daughter, come here,’ roared the Duke, his anger back.

  ‘No,’ repeated the Duke’s daughter.

  Two new arrivals to the church walked down the nave to join the Duke, Thornhill and the great, dark figure they had seen riding by his side.

  ‘Claudio,’ hissed Orlando, naming his arrival.

  ‘Count Claudio,’ said his brother with a grin to underpin the title. He made a little tutting sound and wagged his finger at Orlando. ‘I was told you were dead.’

  ‘I am. A ghost am I now, come to haunt your guilt-laden conscience.’

  ‘It is not I whose conscience is heavy, Orlando, cruel parricide. I am glad to see you again only that I may also see justice this day.’

  His voice betrayed little fervour for justice and the grim grin remained, to his brother’s fury.

  ‘Justice?’ Orlando shouted.

  ‘Who is this?’ said Thornhill to Count Claudio. He spoke disinterestedly and Claudio answered in the same manner, as if they did not stand at the edge of a forest of blades all pointed at the object of their talk.

  ‘This is Orlando, my brother, and, unhappy to relate, my father’s murderer,’ answered Claudio.

  ‘From Padua I murdered him?’ Orlando’s reply thrilled with all the anger and fear that seemed wanting in the other two. William, watching, thought it was as if Orlando hoped by his own great emotion he could colour theirs. Ours is a lonely path, thought William, and one in which we wish our cares were held in as high regard by others. They never are.

  ‘Villain! Smiling, damned villain. For one may smile and smile and murder while you smile, at least I see it is s
o in Verona. You, Claudio, are the murderer and before this day is out it is I that shall have justice.’

  Claudio turned his head to the men at the rear of the church without his gaze leaving his brother. ‘Kill him,’ he ordered.

  ‘No,’ cried the Duke beside him. ‘You damned fool, you may hit my daughter.’

  For the first time an emotion other than amusement crossed over Claudio’s face: a look of irritation at being countermanded, a flare of heat on the cheeks at being denied, at being called a fool. Thornhill placed his hand on Claudio’s arm and spoke in more soothing terms: ‘Too hasty, Count. There are those among these men I would question.’

  Aemilia’s thoughts at first had all been fixed on her father’s sudden appearance and her firm desire to defy him. Then she had seen him and the way darkness rimmed his eyes and worry drew back the corners of his cracked lips and she had felt her child’s heart quaver at the sight till his roared command that she heel to him had stiffened her resolve. Then this sudden passage between the brothers had turned her to look between Orlando and Count Claudio. She heard the wretched pain in Orlando’s voice as he spoke of his father’s murder and, heedless, she had reached out to clutch his arm in sympathy. When Claudio had bid the archers shoot she had tensed against the anticipated blow and heard her father’s voice cry ‘no’ with a relief that near unmanned her. Then realisation that the stay of execution was but temporary struck her and she felt the tension gather in her chest again. Her pulse hammered in her temples. How would this end? She straightened her back and stared at her father. She’d made her choice before now and grown to the truth of it in her heart. If now they were caught then, like the stag at bay, all that remained was to make a proud end.

  You must lay down the treasures of your body