The Assassin of Verona

by The Assassin of Verona (retail) (epub)

  ‘Get out of my man’s way, Master Russell, or suffer the priest’s fate.’

  Francesco stepped slowly round Hemminges who still looked pleadingly at Aemilia. William saw his friend’s unhappiness but he also saw chains breaking. It had not been the Hemminges of old that he had seen in the woods. Some madness hung on him there as it had hung on William himself. Hemminges, a man of stoic disposition if ever there was, now stood with tears in his eyes.

  Francesco reached Thornhill and began to pull him over towards the beam. It seemed that only this movement brought the priest to the reality of his fate.

  ‘Stop, I command you! In the name of the Holy Father, on your faith, take off your hands!’

  Francesco continued to drag him to the corner of the church, to the beam from which Valentine had swung. Francesco pointed to one of his fellows to make him a noose but the man shook his head. He shrugged and pointed to another, older man, who slowly got to his feet, picked up a rope and began to tie the knot that would hang Thornhill.

  The priest’s cries became shriller. ‘His Holiness’s anger will know no bounds! You make your own graves if you follow this course. Stop, stop this! Stop! Stop!’

  Hemminges came up to William. ‘This must not be. His death’s deserved but hanging him, she hangs herself.’

  William simply watched. She’d had her warning. It was not for him to make her judgements. He felt his arm taken in a painful grip. He heard the urgency in the whisper.

  ‘I know you have it in you to make persuasion of her.’

  William looked into his friend’s desperate eyes and shook his head. ‘You are wrong, John. I want that glib and oily art to speak and purpose not. I’d see him hanged twice over.’

  Hemminges let go his friend and strode again to Aemilia. ‘I beg you, not for his sake but for your own. Leave off his execution.’

  ‘My own sake? Should not a daughter want revenge?’

  ‘Should not a ruler be just? Oh, Aemilia, let me speak proudly. You have played upon my love and admiration for you, let that love and admiration counsel you now. When I have loved it was a brave and bold woman that I saw, not one whose rashness overcame her. Where I have admired it was in finding that your boldness was born of a will free and boundless in its vision. Your father was brave, was bold, his will was free as yours is but his bravery turned to anger till anger ruled him; his boldness looked like rashness then and in giving his will rein he gave up judgement. It took justice from him and made him a murderer of his cousin.’

  Aemilia looked past him to Thornhill. Hemminges put his hands upon her shoulders and turned her gaze to his.

  ‘I would not see you be a wanton of your desires but grow in them to be the lady of these lands who rules with justice.’

  Aemilia shook off his hands and walked from him to the old man who had finished at his knot tying and took the noose from him. She stared a long time at Thornhill. The priest became very still. His eyes closed and his lips began to move in a silent prayer. No more the shrill cries, the orders, threats, no more said at all. Aemilia took her eyes from the priest and looked again to Hemminges. Then she threw the noose to the ground.

  Exeunt omnes

  ‘Orlando,’ said Aemilia.

  ‘Count.’

  ‘What say you?’ demanded Aemilia.

  ‘Count Orlando,’ answered the outlaw chief with a smile. He lifted his eyes from his brother’s corpse to look on Aemilia. ‘For so I am by my father’s death and, now, by my usurping brother’s.’

  He looked across to Hemminges. ‘My thanks, Master Russell, for that dear service.’ He made a little bow from his seat and winced as his wounded arm was stretched by the movement. Hemminges paid him no heed, he had eyes only for Aemilia.

  ‘Count Orlando, then,’ said Aemilia. ‘There is much business to be done and little of it done here. Let us to my father’s palace and there tell others of the bitter business of these past few days. My father’s burial, my cousin’s and your brother’s too.’

  Orlando pushed himself painfully to his feet and held out a hand for her support. He slid his arm over her shoulder.

  ‘All this be done and then, dear Aemilia, I have a notion to your good, if you’ll a willing ear incline, what’s mine is yours and what is yours is mine.’

  Aemilia threw off his arm, making him stumble forward.

  ‘You are much mistaken, Count Orlando, if you think I intend to put on a man’s rule having so recently been freed of one. And you would do well to remember that as you are Count Orlando so am I Lady Aemilia.’

  Orlando’s smile came back and he held up his hands in entreaty of peace.

  ‘A wonder and a miracle.’ He glanced to Thornhill whose pale eyes were tied to the noose that lay on the ground by Aemilia’s feet. He looked to Aemilia again. ‘I ever shall be ruled by you, My lady. So to your palace let us go.’

  Aemilia turned to her father’s man, Francesco. ‘Take the priest and whip him till he is close to dead. Then set him on his horse with the rest of his men and drive them from my lands.’

  Francesco bowed and turned to his orders. Thornhill began crying out against the men that advanced towards him to deliver their mistress’s judgement, stern imprecations against their mortal souls, entreaties to their better wills. They dragged him from the church and his voice faded behind the walls. Aemilia made to leave. She drew level with Hemminges. He watched her every movement but she did not look to him when she stopped.

  ‘You and your friends should go.’ He put a hand on her arm to stop her passing. At last she turned her eyes on him. ‘I shall remember your lessons, John Russell. For them and for many things, I am grateful beyond the power of my words to tell. I am not the foolish woman I once was.’ Her own hand rested on his arm as she spoke and he covered it with his other.

  ‘I am sorry for it, for I did not think you foolish.’

  She smiled sadly at him. ‘Yet more reason why we must part.’

  Hemminges watched Aemilia and Orlando leave the church. The air seemed, of a sudden, close about him and he turned and swiftly went outside. He found Oldcastle already there being served a cup of wine by Dionisio, the servant’s face still bearing pink blossoms of misted blood from the battle past. William came to join them.

  ‘Now it seems it is at last our moment to depart,’ said William. ‘Unless that is there is any reason to remain? A lady, perhaps? Or a feathered bed?’ He looked between his fellows.

  ‘I shun comfort now,’ said Oldcastle with feeling. ‘I’d rather a rock for a pillow and a quiet night than this comfort and all the action that must come with it. Aah, that is good, kind Dionisio.’

  The servant was kneading Oldcastle’s shoulders as if Dionisio had not done all the work or Oldcastle far more than cower in a shallow grave till all was done.

  Hemminges shook his head in solemn answer of his own. William clapped him on the back and then pushed away Dionisio and heaved Oldcastle to his feet.

  ‘Our thanks, Dionisio. Will you make our excuse and farewell to the rest?’

  ‘I will. Where do you go now?’

  ‘West.’

  ‘I shall say east.’

  William inclined his head in thanks for another of the servant’s deceptions.

  ‘Our thanks again.’

  Dionisio waved them away. ‘Such entertainment I have not had in many a long day.’

  He saw them off and turned back to go and give his good service to a new mistress.

  Epilogue

  Woods in the Veneto, March 1586

  The future comes apace

  The three Englishmen walked past noon in weary silence. Each taken by the need to put distance between themselves and the bloody business of the day, each caught in his own thoughts and regrets. Oldcastle heaved along at the rear, his mind still turning over that missing piece that came to him each time he looked on his friend William. William walked with a jaunty stride, as if a weight had lifted from him. It had perhaps passed to Hemminges. Hemminges’ shoulders s
tooped low. He had found the line between that which he admired and feared was as the razor’s edge, invisible.

  ‘You are recovered to us, William,’ said Oldcastle when at last they stopped for rest.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘That is good. We have lost Isabella but I would not have lost you, too.’

  ‘I do not think her lost to me. She will live again.’ William’s mind turned to a poem forming in him, a paean to his lost love. ‘An eternal summer she will have.’

  Before he could explain his meaning, Oldcastle gripped his friend’s shoulder and brought him round to look at him. His grip was crushing and there was concern in his face, which William misunderstood.

  ‘I tell you, Nick, I am well again.’

  ‘I fear it is not so,’ said Oldcastle. It had taken him too long to see it, but now he did. He understood that which had worked on his mind and in that understanding was a terror. The old man’s face was serious as it so rarely was. ‘I fear you are a broken vessel, mended but misshapen.’

  William laughed, but Oldcastle’s face did not soften.

  ‘We are not playthings, William.’

  ‘I know that, my friend.’

  ‘I do not think so.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ William asked.

  ‘Aye,’ said Hemminges, ‘what do you mean?’

  ‘All this bloody business has been your doing has it not?’

  ‘The plan was mine, you know that, Nick,’ said William, brow furrowed.

  ‘More than that, William, more than that. We have been led to this moment by you and all those that died, died in your willing of it.’

  ‘Men died so that we might be saved,’ answered William.

  ‘Not all. Some died that you might feel your own power. You have returned to life but not to human feeling.’

  William laughed again but his friend still gripped his shoulders hard and did not share in his laughter. Hemminges looked between the two with anxious gaze.

  ‘Is it not so, William?’ said Oldcastle.

  ‘What is to deny? That I found a care again and it was for my friends?’

  ‘Such a care. When in the woods Aemilia threw off her guise as Sebastian and nearly threatened all. Who prompted her to it?’

  William took a moment to answer.

  ‘I did.’

  Hemminges looked shocked, not just to hear that it was his friend had made Aemilia take this rash course but to hear him admit it in such casual terms.

  ‘What of it? I spoke to her of command and of alliances and she rose to my prompts because these thoughts had already found a purchase within her.’

  Oldcastle pressed his charge.

  ‘And you having learned of it from my servant, good Dionisio, who was it passed on intelligence of the Count Claudio’s convoy to her?’

  ‘I.’

  ‘Was it also your thought to rob it?’

  ‘The thought was all her own.’

  ‘Yet, again, you did prompt her to it?’

  Hemminges’ face was pale despite the tanning of the wind that coloured it as he worked through again the scenes he’d lived through but not understood until this moment: ‘Jesu, and how the crisis that then made forced our hands. My God, William, the dead of that raid will look to you for this.’

  ‘Let them look, they do not touch my conscience. They knew what they did.’ He turned to Hemminges and spoke half in vehemence and half in plea. ‘I wanted only to free you of the witchcraft of responsibility, to show you the girl’s true nature. She cast off more than a man’s weeds that day but still, you stubborn fool, you would not leave her.’

  Oldcastle nodded. ‘And then at the fireside, when we talked of whether the robbery should be made at all and the debate turned from its path, you were there to whisper in Zago’s ear and let him turn it back again.’

  Hemminges struck fist to palm. ‘Valentine! That stupid child, that puppet, it was you that prompted him to that mad confession in the church. You stood by him, you whispered in his ear. What did you say to him? My God, my God, you hanged him, William, sure as if you pulled the noose about his neck yourself.’

  William wrenched himself from Oldcastle’s grasp and threw down his satchel. He strode angrily back and forth before them. ‘Oh list, list, that fool’s plan was all his own, laid long before I spoke to him.’

  ‘But it was you, you that gave him the cue to speak and at the moment that the Duke was in his greatest rage.’

  ‘It was his own desire I spoke to him of. And if he’d been right in his expectation I’d have crowned him in that moment.’

  ‘Right in his expectation? You knave,’ said Hemminges. ‘You knew the Duke’s character better in that brief acquaintance than the simple Valentine did in months of knowing him. You knew there was no hope of such an outcome.’

  William held out his hand to Hemminges in figure of a question made and demanded of his friend: ‘Why shed a tear for a rival gone?’

  ‘“Rival”?’ said Hemminges, not understanding.

  ‘Do not forswear your love for Aemilia now.’

  ‘I loved a simple and proud girl, a woman with spirit. And what if she were still the woman that I loved? What value in the death of a rival when I had no hope to begin with?’

  ‘You had hope,’ said William. There was great pain in his voice as he spoke. ‘We are all fools together, John. We all have hope. At least I did. I thank God such folly is beyond me now. Dead with Isabella’s love.’

  He closed on his friend. ‘You had to see her free, truly free to choose, and see her choose ambition over you. There was enchantment on you and I have broke the spell.’

  William turned to look from Hemminges to Oldcastle.

  ‘I never commanded any. I spoke only that they wished to hear.’

  ‘You have done evil.’

  William snorted and threw up his arms. ‘John, you of all people. To say such childish things. There’s nothing good or evil but thinking makes it so.’

  Hemminges took in his friend’s words with horror writ across his face. He took a step back to look at William and shook his head.

  ‘I see we were wrong,’ he said. ‘You are Prospero. You are not the player of a part. You are the assassin.’

  ‘Damn you.’ William laughed a little – such overblown conceit, to compare him to that assassin.

  ‘Aye, Prospero’ – Hemminges’ hand came out and pointed in accusation – ‘a man who plays with others, who murders with a thought, whose gift is corrupted to misrule. Turn your eye on yourself, William Shakespeare. You who see the minds of others in the turn of their hand, look on your own soul.’

  William saw at last that Hemminges was in deadly earnest. ‘Damn you to hell,’ he answered with a passion he had not felt nor shown in many a long day. ‘I never did aught but for our good, that we may be free, that we may flee this place.’

  ‘You are too late. We are lost forever,’ Hemminges said.

  ‘Faugh! Such drama would shame a boy actor new hatched. The morning will see your understanding clearer.’

  ‘It will not, nor will it see you and I together.’

  A quiet fell in the forest glade where a moment before there had been high-lifted, angry voices. William was staring at Hemminges, Hemminges was shaking his head and Oldcastle was looking between the two with tears in his eyes. Not one of them knew what next to say. A kite called from the air above and a strong wind blew gossips through the trees, the rest was silence.

  Hemminges turned on his heel and began to walk away to the north. William made no move to follow. Oldcastle’s eyes followed Hemminges and then he turned and clapped a hand on William’s shoulder and, again, gripped as tightly as he might.

  ‘William, William. What have you done? What have you become?’

  The grip became a shake of William’s shoulder and then, abruptly, Oldcastle broke away and set off after Hemminges.

  After a few minutes the pair were lost to sight among the trees and William was alone. He stood there a good
deal longer till at last he reached down and picked up his pack and, pointing himself west, began to walk. As he walked he sang and none saw the tears that coursed his face.

  Thy tooth is not so keen

  Because thou art not seen,

  Although thy breath be rude.

  Heigh-ho! sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly:

  Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:

  Then, heigh-ho! the holly!

  This life is most jolly.

  Historical Note

  The death of Isabella Lisarro is modelled on the terrible recollection of the death of Ada Lovelace from what we must suspect was cervical cancer. For the information I am extremely grateful to John Butler, consultant gynaecologist at the Royal Marsden Hospital and, I am delighted to say, friend of many years.

  It is William’s fate to have his personal tragedy overshadowed by the political intrigues with which he is now embroiled. In 1585 there is a new pope and he has worldly ambitions. The Papacy in the sixteenth century was more than just a spiritual power, it was a temporal one too. The Pope was the ruler of vast lands in Italy, the Republic of St Peter, the Papal States. Yet with so many demands on the Papacy – to counter Protestantism, to defend against the infidel Ottomans, to guide France towards a Catholic king – it was not surprising that the business of ruling the Papal States went neglected.

  So it was that when the Cardinal Montalto succeeded to the Holy See in 1585, as Pope Sixtus V, he found that his predecessor, Pope Gregory, had gifted him a legacy of lawlessness and penury. Banditry was rife throughout the Papal States and order lax among the clergy. The new pope brought order back with a vicious hand. Thousands of bandits were caught and hundreds executed, as were the religious that had breached their vows of chastity. It was contemporaries that claimed there were more heads on spikes on the Pont Sant’Angelo in Rome than melons in the marketplace. Only with this done did Sixtus V turn to rebuilding the Church’s finances – through ruinous taxes and the sale of indulgences, among other things.

  The Pope’s political concerns were many. Two were most pressing: first, the battle between the Protestant Huguenots and the Catholic party in France, the so-called War of the Three Henries. France had a sizeable Protestant minority whose political leader was Henry of Navarre. That Henry was the heir to the Catholic Henry III, ill and weak and without male issue. The prospect of a Protestant king filled the Catholic French nobility with fear and loathing. Their leader, the third Henry, of Lorraine, Duke of Guise and leader of the Catholic League, set his face against Henry of Navarre’s succession. Into this conflict the new pope stepped, unenthusiastically but determinedly. On 9 September 1585 he excommunicated Henry of Navarre, a problem that the pragmatic Henry would ultimately resolve by converting to Catholicism with the famous phrase, ‘Paris is well worth a mass.’