The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  In his words and manner there had been an urgency to Valentine unseen before and that gave William warning of the Duke’s arrival. He’d heard the echoed words ‘too late’ in Valentine’s mouth and it was this alone that gave him time to draw Dionisio to him and send him with a message to the outlaws’ camp before the net had closed around them. Dionisio would prove true. Even if caught, he might be spared the Duke’s wrath enough to slip away at some later point and complete his task. All this had been William’s calculation of the instant. Had Dionisio been taken? Did he lie dead, a traitor’s reward given him by an angry master? I am, thought William, become a gambler of other men’s lives.

  The rest had been the crafting of William’s mind, extempore. The scene in the church had seemed to him so very like the Commedia all’Improvviso that he had seen in Venice. The characters he played with as familiar as household stuff: the angry father, the hypocrite priest, the villainous brother, the noblewoman, the foolish lover and, in William himself, the clown, making mock of them all. How many times had he almost laughed out loud as they played their parts, spoke lines he’d crafted for them from their follies and their desires, each as plain to him as the noses on their faces.

  Thornhill had been easiest of all. He so longed to have his goodness noted that he would accept any witness of it, even an assassin, so long as that assassin made good report of him to his master, the Pope.

  Yet all had been easy, so very easy.

  A man may weep upon his wedding day

  ‘Up, up,’ growled Claudio, kicking his still sleeping servant to his feet as he passed to come and stand over the prisoners. ‘Morning is come, the wedding hour is nigh and my bride awaits.’

  ‘I’ll die first,’ answered the bride from her place on the floor.

  ‘Maybe after,’ said the Count. He squatted down and placed a hand on her leg and pressed. ‘But not before.’

  Aemilia spat and the Count laughed as he stood up out of the path of her anger. ‘Your father’s people must see you by my side and hear the Pope’s emissary pronounce us lawfully married. Who knows, Lady Aemilia, with time you may find me a pleasing husband and I may find that you have that in you that keeps my interest.’

  Hemminges struggled to rise in her defence only to receive a boot in the chest from the Count that sent him sprawling back against the cracked altar.

  ‘A cold morning for a wedding,’ observed William, coming alongside the Count.

  ‘Some seem hot,’ grinned the Count. ‘And the wedding bed will be warm enough.’ He looked down at Aemilia, who drew her legs to her chest.

  Thornhill walked over, his hands rubbing impatiently on his robe, trying to bring warmth into the pale fingers. The cold seemed to have leached his little colour from him and his thin skin and sharp bones gave him the look of a cadaver.

  ‘Let the wedding be performed. We must not linger. These Englishmen must be questioned with all speed and it is near a day’s ride to the palace if we are not to kill the horses.’

  ‘I am ready,’ said the Count.

  ‘There cannot be a wedding while the church is a grave. It is not holy,’ said William, pointing to the bodies piled just outside.

  ‘I shall be the judge of that,’ answered Thornhill. ‘There is no need for any special sanctification to be made. Come, come, make haste.’

  ‘Preparation for the journey must be made. Let these prisoners here perform the burial,’ said William. ‘It will warm them, eh, Count? And remind them of the consequence of disobedience.’

  Claudio was nodding; there was a perverse delight in having the daughter bury the father on her wedding day and the bodies must be disposed of, if the lies that surrounded them were to be hidden.

  ‘Let it be done, Father,’ said the Count. It need not delay us. Our men may make preparation for departure as these ones work. Then we wed and then we ride.’ His leer spoke to the double intent of his words. Aemilia shuddered at them. Thornhill threw up his hands in exasperation.

  ‘Let it be so then, but haste, Count, haste.’

  Two loves I have of comfort and despair

  ‘At first light,’ said Dionisio. ‘That was Adam’s command.’

  ‘The madman?’ scoffed Zago.

  ‘If he is mad then he is mad in craft,’ said Dionisio. ‘His instruction was precise. That we prepare to make assault at first light.’

  When Dionisio had breathlessly brought news of the events at the church, despair had fallen on the outlaws; no men among them more than those of the Duke’s own household who had sided with the outlaws. Dionisio had rallied them, shaming them with their cowardice and herding them towards the church that they might view the field and see how the dangers stood. In the darkness one of the outlaws, an old man of forty winters who moved so silently as to seem more ghost than man, had crept about and brought back the horrid news of the Duke’s death and of the capture of the others. The Duke’s men changed from fear to anger at this report and clamoured for the fight.

  Now Dionisio laid out William’s plan of battle. ‘The silent among us set themselves in the ruins near the church, the archers in the trees and the Duke’s men ready for the charge. Mad Adam will free the prisoners and make assault from the rear at the sound of our battle.’

  ‘God but he asks much trust from us,’ muttered Zago.

  ‘That he answered too. If any man has not stomach for the fight, he says, let him depart.’ Dionisio cast a steely eye about the gathered outlaws. ‘I for one am not so much a coward that I will leave my fellows in their hour of need.’

  ‘Fellows?’ said Zago. ‘You’ve been with us less than a day.’

  But Zago’s querulous comment was growled down by the Duke’s men who all swore they would avenge their master.

  ‘Then it is decided.’

  So they’d set themselves, three of them making a slow and silent journey to wait in the shadows of the ruined house by the church’s front, the finest shots among them climbing the trees to bring down a hard rain of death and the Duke’s men waiting, crouched behind the bushes to the front, for the signal to charge.

  Dionisio watched and waited with them, a thrill of fear and excitement in him, reminding him of younger days before he’d become a servant, when he had held a sword in the dead Duke’s service. A good man, the Duke, who did not deserve to die with a dagger in his back.

  The dawn arrived, Dionisio watched as the soldiers came from the church to relieve the watch and to prepare the horses for their departure. Then William had emerged and looked to the trees. To any standing by him he seemed to stretch himself out of the morning’s stiffness but Dionisio saw and understood: this was the signal to attack.

  ‘Bid the archers shoot,’ he whispered and heard one of the Duke’s men move away.

  At first he thought his order had not been followed and there was a brief moment when he feared the men had fled in the night or fallen asleep and he felt the terror of failure and what it would mean. Then a whisper came through the trees and the long shafts of arrows bloomed among the soldiers in front of the church and their cries went up, the horses neighing and starting, and Dionisio heard himself cry out, ‘Charge! Charge! God for Leonardo!’

  And battle was joined.

  What ceremony else?

  Aemilia knelt by her father’s corpse and closed the milky, staring eyes and brushed dirt from his hair and from his face. She wept no tears. They were all used up. His skin was cold as the ground he lay upon, dirt beaded the face she had kissed a thousand times, dark blood that had welled up from his mouth had dried in the crevices that used to deepen in his cheeks when she had made him laugh. She crossed his stiff arms over his chest and kissed his brow.

  She and the others had dragged the bodies from by the narrow, broken doorway on to the rough ground outside.

  ‘Bury them,’ came the order.

  ‘With what?’ protested Hemminges, pointing to the cold, hard ground. A rusted shovel was flung at him and the remains of an old hoe at Luca. The two men began to
hack at the ground with the paltry implements, chipping and scraping away at it, making slow progress with bound hands. While they worked Petro, Jacopo and Oldcastle laid the dead more reverently on the ground in preparation for the burial.

  From the front of the church there came a shout and the sudden sounds of battle.

  The soldiers turned at it.

  William appeared through the broken doorway. ‘Treachery!’ He pointed into the church. ‘We are betrayed!’ he cried to the soldiers. ‘The outlaws attack us.’

  Two of the prisoners’ guard ran into the church, toward the front. A third reached the opening and felt William’s hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Wait,’ William said and pointed behind the man to where the prisoners stood. ‘You forgot something.’

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘This,’ said William as he drove the man’s dagger, lifted from his belt as he passed, into the soldier’s neck and stepped back, dragging it out again across the soldier’s throat. Oldcastle stared drop-mouthed but Hemminges had already moved, the edge of his shovel swung in his two bound hands catching a fourth soldier in the jaw and then twisting round and over to crack across the soldier’s pate and shatter his skull. The last soldier had drawn his sword and with a savage cut unseamed poor Jacopo, but even as he did so Luca swept his legs from him with his hoe and then Hemminges was on him, finishing him with a strike. Shouts came from the church as the first two guards realised they were deceived and turned, swords drawn, to charge on the prisoners, calling for their comrades to join them in the fight.

  They closed and slowed as they did, for now they saw how narrow that gap where the broken doorway was. William stood in it wielding the sword he had plucked from the first man killed. In such a gap, if he were trained to it, one man might hold off an army, for each must come at him one by one. William parried the first blow and swung back, taking the soldier’s arm. Thank God for Hemminges’ hard lessons now, he thought. Fight as they do on the Ponte dei Pugni, the Bridge of Fists, on the narrow galleys, and these fools who need a field to swing their blades in are done for. We needed a hero out of ancient times to live through this and, look, here am I become Gaius Martius at Corioli, holding back the Volsci in their sally.

  Behind him, William heard Hemminges calling for Aemilia to help him cut the ropes that bound him and the others. From the front were the sounds of rising battle outside the church. Then he heard a great shout: it was his own. A cry of delight bursting from his throat, to hear his plots come to their head, to see his scenes play out as he had written them, to feel the exultation of his own understanding and its power.

  Then more soldiers appeared, Claudio’s men, half a dozen at least, coming in answer to the cries for help from their comrades. William felt Hemminges press in by his side. Blades drove at them, grim, bearded faces beneath their helms, howling their anger and stabbing, stabbing, stabbing. William and Hemminges beat and parried and swung. A man fell, to William’s blade or Hemminges’, he could no longer tell. The world was a whirl of steel and shouts. He felt the cut that would have maimed him slide instead along his forearm as he twisted and he pulled the man sharply forward as he overreached. Luca’s shovel finished him. Another thrust near took his head. There were too many. Even in the narrow doorway their blows took a toll, his arm was heavy, sweat ran down his face. At the rear of the church appeared Arrigo and another of Thornhill’s men. They saw the desperate struggle at the door and charged.

  Faith, he thought, I have gambled with my own life too and lost.

  Wherein, ye gods, you tyrants do defeat

  The suddenness of the outlaws’ assault had given them advantage. The score of soldiers were caught first by the arrows from the fore and then struck from the side by the men who had hidden in the ruined house nearby. The outlaws, at first equal in number to those outside the church, made what they could of these advantages. Yet the Count Claudio’s men and the papal soldiers made war their profession. They rallied and fought back. More came from within the church to replace those that had died in the first moments. The tide of battle turned.

  Those three brave men among the outlaws who had crept into the ruins of the nearby house the night before fell to chopping blades and the outlaws began to waver in their attack. All would have turned to rout but Zago, a look of surprise on his face at his own courage, flung himself forward and the battle turned again. Zago fell, a sword cracking his head, but in that moment, when his furious charge had pushed back the line of soldiers, there had been time enough for the old Duke’s men to grasp at the reins of their enemy’s fleeing horses and mount them. They turned their steeds and charged the line, which broke, the soldiers falling back on the church, and into that place of sanctuary the battle flowed.

  William saw the sudden rush of soldiers fleeing from the battle outside and pressed forward. Hemminges on one side and Luca the other, the three advanced. Hemminges’ sword smoked with bloody execution. William’s own, dancing, pressed and harried at the soldiers and even Luca’s clumsy hacks with the shovel now met their target as the soldiers fell back in disarray. Driven now from front and rear, desperate of escape and finding it blocked in all directions, the soldiers’ will broke and, as a scale will tip, the battle turned from desperate fight to sudden slaughter. Arrigo found himself alone and had time only to snarl defiance and lift his own sword before William’s blade whirled toward him. He made to turn block into backswing but cried out instead as Aemilia darted out from behind William and slammed her small dagger into his side. William took his moment, punched out and caught Arrigo in the jaw with his sword’s hilt. He stumbled back and fell and Aemilia leapt on him, wild-eyed with rage, crying out vile curses and slamming home her knife again and again until William hauled her from the corpse.

  Claudio still held his nerve. He stood in the centre of the nave and, roaring, laid about him. Hemminges, growling like the Nemean lion, fronted him.

  ‘Now I am not bound, coward, now will you pay,’ cried Hemminges, his sword spinning in his hand.

  ‘Base and mean will be your grave,’ roared the Count in answer.

  This was no duel, no fine and slender swordplay for display. Claudio sought to use his height, his strength, to crush Hemminges but that day, with Aemilia in his mind, Hemminges was valour’s minion. Claudio hacked down at Hemminges as if he sought to fell an ox, his blows enough to shatter stone and steel. Hemminges was not there to meet them. He danced and slipped and thrust. For a long minute violence and grace contended until at last, with a cry, Hemminges’ sword pierced the Count’s side. Hemminges ripped it free. Claudio staggered, fell to one knee and coughed once, a bloody thing, and then, his blade a-whirling, Hemminges struck a second blow. Claudio dropped dead, unseamed from nave to chops.

  Courage flowed out of the rest at the baleful sight. Those still standing threw down their swords and cried for mercy. Only Thornhill was unmoved, remaining in the centre of the church, arms spread wide, loud in prayer. Hemminges stepped to him and kicked him in the stomach and with a cry the priest fell back to his knees, retching. Hemminges’ sword came up to deal a mortal blow but his hand was caught by William’s. For a moment the two men glowered at each other.

  ‘You are not turned executioner yet, John,’ said William.

  Hemminges stalked away.

  The quality of mercy is not strained

  The outlaws had lost some half a dozen men, Zago and Jacopo among them. These they buried in the grave that had been made for Duke Leonardo. The Duke’s body, at Aemilia’s insistence, had been wrapped in linen to be taken back to the palace for burial and lay upon the altar. Of those that had followed Count Claudio only two remained and of the soldiers of St Peter, scarce a dozen men still lived and none without wounds. They were guarded by the outlaws in the chancel where Aemilia and the others had spent the night before.

  Thornhill, despite being bound, stood proudly in the nave, disdaining to meet the eyes of any around him. Orlando sat on a pew nearby staring at the bloody remains of
his brother.

  ‘What shall be done with this priest?’ asked Aemilia.

  ‘Set him free,’ answered William. ‘Some expiation must be made for your father’s death but he is too close to the Pope. That is too powerful an enemy to make so early in your rule, Lady Aemilia.’

  ‘My rule?’

  ‘Your father dead, are you not the heir?’

  So it is, thought Aemilia. I have received all I sought. I rule not just myself but others. Such a bloody road I have walked to get here.

  ‘I am.’ She called one of her father’s men to her.

  ‘You are Francesco?’

  ‘I am, my lady.’

  ‘The Duke, my father, is dead.’

  ‘My sorrow for it and for your loss, my lady.’

  ‘I do not want your sorrow as much as your obedience, which is owed to me as his heir.’

  Francesco spoke slowly in answer. ‘It is, my lady. And your will?’

  She pointed to Thornhill. ‘This man is my father’s murderer. Take him and hang him from that beam there.’

  Francesco looked from her to Thornhill and thence to the beam she pointed to.

  ‘Why do you hesitate?’

  The soldier looked to the men about her. Aemilia snarled, ‘Is this obedience?’

  ‘This is not wise,’ said William, stepping closer.

  Aemilia’s face became ugly with anger. ‘"Wise"? “Wise"? I loved my father not wisely but too well, too well to let his murderer go forth.’

  She turned back to Francesco: ‘I say again, on your obedience, hang that man.’ Her voice had grown to a pitch that brooked no further argument.

  Francesco turned to his task. Hemminges stepped in front of him to block his way.

  ‘Aemilia, you yourself spoke of the need for mercy in great ones. Let not your rule begin with bloodshed and the making of enemies.’