Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  The view, nineteen years on, as he emerged into the light again, was different. Then, there had been a bare hundred people, the elect of the elect, who had fought to be present at the killing of the Queen. Now, at least five hundred heads bobbed on the Green, between the south wall and the squat, massive White Tower opposite. His view was different too, for then he’d stood with his back to the chapel, on a straw-strewn scaffold, the small crowd reaching right up to it. Now, the chapel was to his left with no wooden stage before it, just four stakes thrust into the grass in a rough semi-circle, a huge pile of chopped wood at their centre, warded by a double line of soldiers that stretched all the way across to the White Tower. Beside three of the stakes stood men in besmirched leathern aprons, crude, sack-like masks over their heads, oval slashes for their eyes. Each held a hammer, nails, and a hoop of iron.

  ‘Now where’s that bloody man at, then?’ Magonnagal peered over the crowd, shading his eyes from the morning sun. ‘Ah!’ he cried and Jean followed his outstretched arm to the corner of the White Tower, where smoke was already rising, blown across the crowd by a strong easterly, carrying the first scent of roasted flesh. At the centre of the swirl, he could see the huge figure of Makepeace, stripped of his doublet, moving between two spits, cajoling the spit boys, larding the sheep carcasses, the fat lifted from a trough within the fires with a large ladle. He saw Uriah see them, see Magonnagal anyway, who was waving a scarlet cloth on a pole above his head. Raising the ladle in acknowledgement, Uriah turned to talk to someone beside him, but Jean could not see who it was through the smoke.

  ‘Ale!’ bellowed the Irishman, rapping the pole on a hogshead. ‘Finest sweet ale from the Ram, in Southwark.’ Those nearest began to press upon them, waving wooden cups and small coin. Jean and Anne, squeezed to the side, mounted the stairs that led to the upper level.

  He had just turned to her to say, in vain hope, ‘Do you see Gianni?’ when a blast of trumpets overcame his words. It issued from the White Tower, whose massive, iron-studded doors swung open to the sound, as if the braying had hitherto been contained within them. The single blast still bounced off the walls when another sound joined it, the deep trump of a single drum. All eyes, including theirs, fixed upon the dark entranceway, as the head of the procession emerged. It was led by pikemen, dressed in the scarlet doublets and black hose of the Tower guard, advancing in four ranks of five, their weapons lowered so that the crowd parted before the points, forming an avenue as wide as the squad’s front. To their rear, the single drummer walked alone, his beat dictating the procession’s pace. Behind him came five trumpeters, their instruments now at rest to their sides. These were followed by the priests, six of them, in white surplices, three carrying banners of black silk split with a white cross, the lamb of Christ couched in the top right quarter. One waved a censer that issued forth clouds of fragrant sandalwood smoke, two clutched huge altar candles with sheltered flames, a fourth tolled a heavy bell; each of the six chanted, as they walked, the Latin Misere in harmony and dirge-like solemnity.

  The crowd began to shout, for behind the priests emerged those they had come to see die. The four prisoners were dressed in simple contrast, like pilgrims in their plain smocks, barefoot; three had their hands bound before them, one huge man and two women, while the fourth, a youth, the only one of them who wept, clutched a piece of firewood in his un-yoked hands. Beside each of them a cowled figure held a book of prayer, their hooded faces leaning in, lips moving in the shadows. Only the man in the black cloak beside the weeping boy did not speak, a hand resting on his shoulder.

  ‘Why does he carry wood, Father? What does it mean?’

  ‘He has repented. So he “carries his faggot” as a sign. The boy will not burn today.’

  As the end of the procession emerged – a company of archers following a few richly dressed men, members of the council – the head of it reached the rank of soldiers before the execution ground. They parted to admit them and warders and priests spread out among the stakes. The weeping youth threw down his wood and was led away by his black-cloaked comforter. The remaining three prisoners were seized by the masked men, who girdled them with the iron hoops, fastening these with rivets to the centre of the stakes. They began to build a rough pyramid of logs around each stake over a core of dried bracken while the trumpets sounded. As their call died away, as the priests ended their dirge, the drum struck, once, twice, again.

  Two of the cowled companions who had prayed and exhorted beside the sinners until that moment now moved to places behind the council. The third, who had stood beside the huge heretic, went the opposite way, toward the brazier, where a torch was lit and passed into his hand. Raising it high above him, he picked up the drum’s beat and walked slowly toward the first stake, the man he’d just left, whose lips moved in ceaseless prayer. A silence now gripped the throng, one so profound that all that could be heard beyond the drumbeat, beyond the snapping of silk banners in the breeze, beyond the whisper of the martyrs, was the crackling of flames.

  It was when the torchbearer threw back his cowl that Anne gripped Jean’s arm, crying out as if she had been stabbed. He could not penetrate the smoke that swirled between him and the killing ground, could not see what she had just seen. But there was no mistaking the voice he next heard, though he had not heard it in three years, though it had deepened and lost its Tuscan coarseness.

  ‘Observe the justice of the Lord!’ cried Gianni Rombaud as he thrust the flames into the pyre.

  That voice took away all other sounds, those words breaking something inside Jean. Time slowed, as it always had at Death’s approach, but now he was no longer at the centre of that vortex of power, he was at its edge, unable to channel it, scarcely able to move, only able to watch as his daughter went past him, lifting one foot, setting it down, lifting the other, setting it down, lips forming a name, her brother’s name, as if his name, screamed out, would be enough to stop the horror. He knew that in her world sounds existed, exploding from a frenzied crowd moving forward for a better view, that in her world the hand he raised – too slowly, too late – might stop her. Yet even though she seemed to barely move she was gone, the black hair glimpsed now and then as she somehow passed through the throng.

  ‘No!’

  It was Jean’s turn to scream, for once more a Rombaud stood at the darkest centre of this dark realm, wielding death. Yet all that despair was a whisper in a storm, snatched up, blown away, by the noise of the crowd returning in full fury. He turned to his right, to where Uriah was forging, as if through a sea of caps, toward him. He turned left, to see Magonnagal pick up a club from behind a hogshead and take the first step his way. Suddenly, he knew, he recognized his betrayal and he turned away; but his children were before him and, at just that moment, another surge in the crowd pushed those behind Jean forward. Somehow, the shadow of the gap Anne had opened was still there. He let himself be swept into it, people flooding behind him into the channel, like the tide carving into a cliff face.

  ‘Anne!’ he screamed, to no avail.

  Each step was harder, the wall of flesh ahead of her denser, but she had to break through. For it was not her brother who stood there exalting death. It was not he who pushed the brand into the wood, nor he who had stabbed the German at the crossroads. A demon possessed him, that was clear, and she only had to part this crowd, to reach the centre of the swirling smoke, to wrench that demon from Gianni’s soul.

  Gianni prayed for the wind to return and clear the smoke away. He had heard that heretics would choke and faint, that they were smoked to death rather than burned. That seemed like an evasion of God’s will, for only in fire was that will made manifest, representing both the purging of all impure elements, the scouring away of these heretics’ dreadful sins and the awful warning of what awaited such sinners in the eternity of hell. He had himself pulled the sacks of gunpowder from around their necks that some kind or bribed person had tied there to end their pain more swiftly. God would not be so cheated! The flames felt lik
e an extension of himself. They did not start when he pushed the brand into the brazier, they ran from within him, his holy spirit flowing from his heart, transforming wood into tongues of fire.

  It is all so simple, he thought, As simple as faith. These sinners would bring the Antichrist. These sinners must die.

  Jean saw the torch raised in triumph, then thrust into the last of the pyres, just as the smoke from the first, fast billowing now, snatched away his view both of his daughter pushing through the dense crowd and his son aglow with the ecstasy of sacrifice. Sounds were clear within the smoke, the coughing of both victims and spectators, frantic prayers turning to shrieks as the heat reached the heretics’ bare feet, the beat of the drum, the tolling of the bell, the dirge of the Misere all undernotes to the baying of the crowd. Somehow he had closed the gap to his daughter, she was two arm’s lengths ahead of him, five people between, the rank of soldiers buckling as far ahead again. Jean knew that his pursuers were not much further behind.

  ‘Anne!’ he screamed again, knowing it was futile.

  He’d all but reached her when she hit the line of breastplated guardsman, ducked down, disappeared into the thrust of legs. He saw her again as she appeared on the other side, running the short distance now between the soldiers and the last of the pyres.

  Hands wrapped around the arm that clutched fire. Gianni looked into a face that couldn’t be there.

  ‘Stop this!’ Anne cried, the suddenness of her assault wresting the brand from him. She threw it aside, took his head in both her hands.

  ‘Gianni, oh child, oh my brother! What sins do you commit here?’

  The words, the hands, the black eyes. His whole family in them, everything he had escaped from, all that was wrong with the world. He looked away from her to the backs of soldiers struggling to contain a crowd. To one man standing before them. To his father.

  Jean Rombaud was close enough now to hear the words that went with the slap, as Gianni backhanded Anne, crashing her onto smoking wood.

  ‘I do God’s work here, sister. And the only sinner is … him!’

  And just as Gianni pointed directly at him, Jean felt fingers dig into his shoulder.

  ‘Nothing personal, Rombaud,’ came a familiar voice. ‘Just business, you understand.’

  He squirmed in Uriah’s grip, but the hand held him firmly, joined by others as Magonnagal arrived.

  ‘Club the bloody man, shall I?’ the Irishman said.

  ‘No need.’ Makepeace looked like he was bestowing a great favour. ‘Rombaud’s a man who knows when a game’s up.’

  Jean sagged, would have fallen if the press of the crowd and the hands had not held him.

  It was at that moment that the first pyre truly caught and the giant heretic left his prayers to scream. All eyes were drawn by the dreadful wail of agony. The man tried to escape the heat, raising his legs from the ground, his body contorting. But the iron girdle around his waist held him and he sank down again, his brown shift catching, encasing him in crimson and yellow, his hair smouldering. Then, just as it seemed as if his agony could go on no longer, as if the martyrdom he’d sought would take him, his huge body bent, dipped into the heart of the fire and, uttering his most terrifying groan, he stood up. The stake that had held him was wrenched from the ground.

  The sight took away the crowd’s voice, halted the drum, stopped the bell, suspended the dirge mid-note. The burning figure took one step, another, began to totter forward. Then, with the scattering of the embers at his feet, as flaming logs cascaded off the pyre, the burning man burst from the middle of his own execution, bent and ran straight into the line of soldiers.

  The top of the stake drove into a guardsman’s head, snapping the neck, knocking him forward. The blade of his halberd sliced into a man to Jean’s left, one of Uriah’s who held him. The crowd exploded away from the burning man. As the stake went over his head, Jean ducked, was singed as the human torch flared by him, separating him from Uriah, who had no choice but to leave his grip or burn. In the space that had cleared, the martyr now began whirling, as if in movement there would be relief, instead of the increase in flame, in agony. The people scattered, trying to avoid the sparks that showered off him, several caught by the ends of the stake as it swept by. Free, Jean saw a gap, and dived into the crowd. He didn’t look back until he had reached its extremity, until he could raise himself onto the lowest step of the Beauchamp Tower.

  The whirling figure finally stopped, staggered, fell in a flash of flames. Lit by them, Uriah was casting about, shouting, seeking. Jean ducked, but not so low that he could not see to the centre of the Green. See his daughter, lying at his son’s feet where his son’s blow had thrown her.

  Anne! He took a step, just the one, back toward her, his hand clutching the emptiness at his side. Once there would have been a sword there. Once he wouldn’t have thought, just drawn Toledo steel, thrust its square tip ahead of him, used it and the chaos around him to get in, seize his child, get out. Once.

  Turning his back, Jean Rombaud crouched low and ran.

  THIRTEEN

  TARTARUS

  ‘Something’s happening!’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘The gate.’

  ‘Ah, the gate.’ There was a yawn. ‘Anyone come out?’

  ‘Not yet. Wait, there’s someone, it’s …’

  ‘Another guard?’

  ‘Two. And the gates haven’t closed behind them.’

  ‘Really.’ Haakon yawned again. He hadn’t even opened his eyes so he didn’t need to reclose them. When they’d first found this perch opposite the prison, in the barn beside the tavern, he’d reacted almost as swiftly as Erik to every action at the gate opposite, hoping for a pattern to emerge there or some moment of carelessness, anything that might give them their chance. Three weeks of such reacting had worn away his edge. Three weeks of plans, from the abduction of guards to tunnelling from where they watched, each one feverishly thought through, then painfully abandoned. It drained him; so, latterly, he had limited his efforts to restraining Erik from charging the gates.

  ‘They look different, Father, these two. And they’re pacing as if they’re expecting someone.’

  ‘It’s a prison, boy. People come and go every day.’

  ‘Look! Two more have joined them. They’re pointing back into the yard. Look!’

  With a groan, Haakon rolled over and put his eye to a gap in the rough loam wall. Four guards were indeed standing there.

  ‘So? Waiting for the rest of their shift so they can go and get drunk next door. I wish I could join them.’ Haakon dropped back, closed his eyes again, ran his tongue around the dryness of his mouth. Their remaining coin bought them the right to sleep in the stable and just enough food for each day. He hadn’t tasted wine in a week.

  The door creaked, and the third of their number appeared. ‘Something’s happening,’ the Fugger said.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell him!’ Erik was already reaching for his weapons, as he had one hundred times since their arrival. ‘It’s those guards, isn’t it?’

  ‘Guards?’ The Fugger looked out, then back. ‘I don’t know about them. But something is happening in Rome.’ He squatted down beside Haakon. ‘The Pope is dead.’

  Again, Haakon didn’t bother to open his eyes, just sighed. Between his lovelorn son and the anxious father he seemed to be the only one whose brains were not addled.

  ‘Fugger, the Pope died three weeks ago, the day after we arrived. Why are you excited by such old news?’

  ‘Because I’m not talking about Paul the Third. I’m talking about Marcellus the Second.’

  Haakon finally opened one eye. ‘But wasn’t he just elected?’

  ‘Yes. And now he’s just dead. But there’s much more than that. The man who succeeds him? Who is already issuing his orders from the Vatican? It’s Carafa.’

  This brought the other eye wide open as Haakon leaned forward. ‘That Neapolitan bastard? The Head of the Inquisition? But he�
��s mad!’

  ‘That never disqualified anyone from being Pope, Haakon.’ The Fugger spoke with a contempt born in his Protestant youth. ‘No one cares, because his madness is directed against the Church’s enemies – and Carafa has a long list. Anyone who strays one fingernail from the Orthodox is in grave danger. The rumours I have heard say that squads of soldiers are already spreading out through the city, arresting heretics, witches, Jews, anyone who carries the Lutheran taint. You know what that will mean?’

  ‘What?’ Erik said, when his father merely nodded.

  ‘The prisons will be crammed full, boy. Lots of to-ings and fro-ings, lots of activity, which is good for us. In fact …’ Haakon put his eye again to the gap. ‘By a whore’s weary back, you were both right. Something is indeed happening.’

  They all went to the entrance of the stable. Across from it, the prison gates still stood open, but there were twenty guards now, soldiers in helm and breastplate, pikes at port, forming a corridor out into the street. As they watched, there was a stirring within the yard and a man put his head out, blinking into the sunlight. He looked around in panic, tried to withdraw but was shoved forward by someone behind him. A soldier raised his pike, struck him with the butt end in his side. The man ran forward, receiving blows left and right, falling once. He reached the end of the line and ran, down the street, round the corner. He’d just cleared it and disappeared when a group of five ran from the gates, followed by ten more, some clutching little sacks, most empty handed, raising them to ward off such blows as they could.

  ‘What is this?’ Erik winced as he saw kicks connect.

  ‘A little last punishment, a warning.’ The Fugger’s voice was grim. ‘They’re clearing the cells to make room for the new Pope’s enemies. These are the unimportant prisoners – thieves, murderers, rapists. Far better they are free so a woman who wants to read the Bible in her own tongue can be locked away.’