Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘And we are bound for its lowest level. Come, over there.’

  Reaching the table of parchments, Haakon threw his son down before it.

  ‘Captain and prisoner!’ he said loudly, dropping his pass onto the table, praying to both Odin and Christ that no one here knew the man whose name was on the papers. When no one reacted, and the clerk to the officer’s left picked up the piece of parchment, he added, ‘And a special prisoner it is too. This is the Witch of Trastevere.’

  He kicked at the prone body and Erik gave a convincing female groan.

  ‘I have not heard of her.’ The clerk’s voice was nasal, high-pitched. He began flicking through his lists.

  ‘Not heard of the Witch of Trastevere?’ Erik noted his father’s voice drop into a familiar register, one he had heard all his life as Haakon wove his dazzling tales. It was barely above a whisper, designed to draw an audience in. The clerk and officer leaned forward.

  ‘Not heard of the hag who pulls unwanted babies from careless girls’ stomachs, who uses the flesh of the unborn to curse the father, wither his flesh, ravage his manhood with carbuncles and boils?’

  Both men shifted in their seats, crossed their legs, crossed themselves.

  ‘When I went to her hovel, candles were set in skulls and flayed skins hung from the rafters. I killed twenty cats, her familiars, that snarled, bit, scratched at me, barring my way to her dank bed.’

  Erik let out what he thought was a cackle, swiftly cut off by the toe of Haakon’s boot.

  The clerk swallowed. ‘Speed her inside then, just beyond this doorway. We’ll keep her nearby, for she sounds like one of the first for the flames.’

  ‘Oh no, friend.’ Haakon’s voice maintained its timbre. ‘When the sun is fully gone, she can turn into a bat. Those barred windows will not hold her. There is only one place for the likes of her: Tartarus!’

  ‘Aye,’ said the officer. ‘We’ll send her there. Guard?’ He called over his shoulder.

  ‘I must take her, friend.’ Haakon leaned closer. ‘One look at her face and she has you in her power. It was only that I killed her familiars, took their power, that I can control her. Their blood has dried on my skin. See!’ He thrust out a wrist, scratch marks there from the struggle in the barn.

  Clerk and officer looked at the wounds, at each other, the latter nodded, and a seal was dipped in ink and banged down on the parchment.

  ‘Through that door on the left, the low one. There is only one stairwell.’ The officer crossed himself again, added, ‘But do not linger down there long, Captain. Dump her and leave. And may Christ protect you!’

  ‘Amen, friend. I will stay only till my holy duty is done.’ Haakon smiled briefly, then kicked the figure at his feet. ‘Come, whore of Babylon. To your fate!’

  Erik struggled to keep the headcloth in place as he got up. It slipped a little but the men’s eyes were averted, heeding the warning, choosing to focus on the heretic families behind him. Haakon’s hand in his back shoved him forward.

  ‘Lucky so far,’ his father whispered as they climbed the stairs to the doorway.

  ‘Do you have to keep kicking me to make your points?’ Erik hissed.

  ‘Suppose not. But why deny myself the pleasure?’

  They were at the door, the parchment raised to the grate there causing bolts to be withdrawn. They stepped into the gloom.

  Maria Fugger waited, the bone clutched in her right hand, her left fingers checking and re-checking the saw-toothed, sharpened point. She had cut herself upon it … when? An hour before? A day? It didn’t matter. It was the moment she’d tasted her own blood and liked it, its warmth, its iron tang. She had been tempted to cut herself again, in a place where the blood might flow more readily, flow longer. Her own blood had been the first food, the first liquid, that had passed her lips in … three days? A week? She was hungry and she needed to eat. If she didn’t eat she would sleep and if she slept she would never wake again, that was clear. Then she considered that blood alone, however salty-delicious, would not sustain her long. It was not an unlimited resource. But there was other blood near, an endless supply. If she was clever.

  She had heard them move about, listened to their snuffling, felt gossamer whiskers flick her face, kicked out again and again against the prying snout, the scrabbling claw. She had always thought to drive the rats away. Until now. Now she prayed for them to come, prayed hard, waiting in her straw cave, bent over the little space she’d cleared before her. She was ready. This was her realm; for she was a Fugger, after all, and her family ruled the dark, cramped places.

  Sounds came. But not the ones she expected, no scratching, no high-pitched squeak. Instead there was a scraping of a key, a shooting of bolts and then … then the most wondrous sound of all – the voice of her love, shouting her name.

  ‘Maria!’ Erik stood, a silhouette against the torch his father held behind him, reeling from the stench of corruption that he had unleashed in pulling back the door.

  She had seen and heard such glorious phantoms before in the month? The lifetime? – she had been in this place. She knew better than to answer them for she would drive them away with attention. If she lay back and kept her silence, maybe the spirit would speak more.

  Erik grabbed the torch from his father. Haakon reached back, over the prone body of the gaoler unconscious at his feet, and took another from its bracket on the wall. Flinging their arms across their mouths, trying not to breathe in the stench that assailed them, the Norsemen entered Tartarus.

  Hummocks of straw lay scattered before them, like the seed pods of giant plants, random clumps disappearing into the gloom beyond the torch-spill, whose light failed to reach any boundary of wall or ceiling. Where it did fall there was an instant rustle, as if each cave was alive, a creature folding in on itself, shrinking from the glare.

  ‘Maria?’ Erik called again, almost slipping down the slick two steps that led to the dungeon floor.

  ‘Maria?’ a man’s voice answered him, calling back in just his tone. He spun towards it.

  ‘Maria?’ cried another, a woman, from the opposite side. He spun back. Then the shrieking began, voice after voice crying out the one word, from all directions, a hideous cacophony building to a peak and then suddenly dying, as if choked off by a single hand.

  ‘Father …’ His next words were lost in the babble of voices that rose again.

  ‘Father? Father! Father! Father?’ Echoing against the walls, dying just as suddenly as the word before had. And in the silence that followed there was now a palpable anticipation. Somewhere in the darkness someone giggled.

  Haakon, joining his son on the floor, pointed to himself, mouthed, ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Friends …’

  ‘Friends, friends, friends, friends.’

  Rolling over them, waves of sound, the glee in the game clear. Erik cursed, a Tuscan farm curse and some heard it and repeated it and that word then swept around, alternating with, finally subduing ‘Father’. He was about to curse again when that father’s hand clamped over his mouth.

  ‘Freedom,’ cried Haakon, the word instantly picked up, passed around, crescendoing. This one didn’t die, though some ceased, some carried on using it. One voice finally spoke, a man’s voice.

  ‘Freedom?’ he said, and the tone was questioning.

  As soon as it was uttered, Haakon shouted, ‘You’re all free!’ He got the words out before some picked it up, echoed it, while others began crying other words in response. Where before there was uniformity now there was chaos, voices seeking to overrule, to dominate. As the babble built, Haakon took a step deeper into the prison, wondering what to say next. He had no sooner planted his foot when something shot out from a hummock and grabbed it, nearly bringing him down. Haakon lowered the torch till he could see what held him. It was barely a hand, five stumps projecting from a blistered palm. Yet the grip was strong and, as Haakon bent, the voices died around him, allowing him to hear the cracked whisper rising from the centre of the straw
.

  ‘You offer those who have nothing the one thing they desire. But because we have nothing, we have nothing to lose. So beware, if you torment us for your pleasure!’

  ‘I have opened the door,’ Haakon said. ‘I am going to walk through it once I have found whom I seek. I will leave it open, if you will help me.’

  These words were not echoed. Instead, it felt as if the whole cell, every cave creature, the very walls were leaning in, listening, waiting. Silence pressed until finally, that dry voice whispered again.

  ‘Then speak. No one will mock you now.’

  Haakon turned and nodded to his son.

  ‘I seek Maria-Carmine Fugger,’ Erik declared in a loud voice. ‘Can any here tell me where she lies?’

  In her cave, Maria smiled. Of all the dreams she’d had since her imprisonment began this was the best. The words she most desired to hear spoken by the voice she most missed. There was no point speaking back though. Phantoms were so easily scared away. She would answer in her head though.

  ‘I am here, Erik, my lover, my only. Lying back in the straw as you like me to!’

  She couldn’t understand the giggling that rose all round her. She was sure she had not spoken aloud, though it was strange that heavy boots seemed now to be marching toward her. She nestled further in, hiding in her cave.

  ‘Speak again, my love.’

  His voice came from quite close, over to her left. Soon her phantom lover would be there. He would take her in his phantom arms, lay the length of his phantom body beside her, then …

  She let out a little moan. Almost instantly, hands were burrowing at the frail roof above her. Others had tried this before, when they suspected that she had bones to suck. Well, she had a bone now, a special bone, ready to stop any thief by the drawing of his blood.

  The hand reached in to her and she jabbed it with the sharpened bone. The cry of pain had a familiar tone, she had heard something like it before – Erik cried like that when she raked her nails down his back.

  A hand reached again, grabbed and she was being dragged up, out. She raised the bone knife high to drive it down into this violator’s neck …

  ‘Maria!’ Erik cried, holding her above him, looking up in wonder, tears beginning to track down his face.

  ‘No!’ The weapon dropped and she shook her head violently from side to side, tried to twist from his grip, to fall, to scuttle back to safety. Phantoms shouldn’t pick you up, hold you in the air, stare at you with love.

  He held her, despite her wriggling, despite the torch in his other hand.

  ‘Oh my Maria, I have found you.’

  He brought her down, her chest across his shoulder. Suddenly all her struggles ceased.

  ‘The best dream yet,’ she thought, snuggling into him. ‘Might as well enjoy it.’

  ‘Come, Erik, bring her. Her father waits.’ Haakon was back on the steps. He turned, raised his torch into the darkness. The hummocks of straw moved as if drawn to the flame. ‘And for any who wish to leave Tartarus, the gate is open.’

  It was the sight of Captain Lucius Heltzinger in his underclothes running to the prison gates, Long Margaretha at his heels, that finally drove the Fugger to action. Till then he had been content to wait beside the horses, knowing that he could only act when Haakon and Erik appeared. And pray. But the sight of the Captain, trailing his bonds, changed that. The Fugger left the lee of the wall and ran after him.

  ‘Let me through, let me through! I am a Captain of the Guard.’ Lucius was trying to force his way into the dense throng at the gate many of whom resisted being jostled by the nearly naked man.

  ‘They are trying to break out of the prison! Vassari!’ he screamed, seeing a guard he knew. ‘It’s me, Heltzinger. Let me through!’

  ‘By the cross, Captain.’ The soldier looked him up and down in wonder. ‘What has happened to your clothes?’

  ‘Give me your cloak, dolt!’ He ripped the covering from the man’s back. ‘Bruno and Guiseppe are back there, in the stable, trussed in barrels. Send someone. The rest of you, follow, swiftly.’

  The Fugger arrived as Heltzinger grabbed a pike and led a group of men, both soldiers and recently conscripted criminals, through the gate. The Fugger, awkwardly pulling a pistol from within his cloak and yelling as loudly as any, followed.

  The yard within was packed with prisoners and guards, wailing children, angry men, shouting women; the sudden insertion of Heltzinger’s dozen men, shoving and striking out, only raised the temperature. They pushed their way through to the table set before the women’s cells where the officer rose from his seat behind the table.

  ‘You can’t be Lucius Heltzinger,’ he said, concern on his face, trying to be bold. ‘Lucius Heltzinger is inside. He had just taken a prisoner in, not five minutes since. The Witch of Trastevere.’

  ‘The Witch of Trastevere? The Witch of … Christ, you fool!’ It was all Lucius could do not to strike the man. ‘He has hoodwinked you. He goes to free some female traitor. Come on, men! And you, get more guards and block all the gates.’

  ‘No, Captain, not that way! He didn’t go to the women’s prison. He went down there.’ The guard, anxious to redeem himself, had grabbed Heltzinger’s arm. ‘To Tartarus.’

  Using the pike butt, the Captain pushed the low door open but it caught on something just the other side. Two of his men shoved hard, and forced the door. The body of another guard rolled a few steps down, settled.

  ‘Onward, men.’ Lucius decided to lead from the rear. The man he’d wrestled with briefly in the barn was a man he had no desire to meet first.

  The Fugger watched the dozen men go through the low archway. He almost followed, till he realized how little use he would be down there. That was the Norsemen’s province. But if they made it to the top of the stair they would need help.

  He looked around the yard. Many guards had joined the Captain in his descent, leaving less than a dozen now trying to marshall the horde, a frightened, angry mob of at least eighty of Carafa’s enemies. As he watched, a man resisted, struck back, was beaten down with pike butts while others glowered, surged forward in anger.

  The whole place reminded him of the tunnel under the walls of Siena. A well-placed flash of gunpowder could collapse everything.

  Checking that his powder was dry under the wheelock of his pistol, the Fugger moved into the mêlée.

  They were halfway back up the stairwell, when they heard muffled shouting ahead. Haakon raised a hand. Erik, holding Maria against his chest, halted. Behind them, out of sight, there came a faint whispering.

  Then the door above must have opened because there was a blast of noise, a gust of fresher air and, a moment later, the sound of boots descending the circular stair.

  ‘Back!’ Haakon hissed, dashing his torch against the wall. They’d passed a small alcove on either side, six steps below. It wasn’t much, but with walls closer than the span of his arms it was something. He pulled his short battle axe out from the folds of his stolen cloak. From the darkness opposite him, he heard a whispered ‘Can you walk?’, a simple ‘Yes’, the scrape of scimitar on scimitar.

  ‘On, men, on!’ yelled a voice from above and almost immediately there were flickers of light. Torches, thrust forward, preceded the footfall of iron-shod boots.

  When the first flames drew level with his eyes, Haakon screamed, ‘Now!’ and swept his blade above the light.

  The cry of fear that greeted his shout was cut off by the blow, but another followed swiftly.

  ‘Help! We have found th—’

  Erik struck, though the low roof meant that he could not swing, just use the point, the least effective part of his curved weapons. Nevertheless this cry too was choked in blood, replaced instantly by his yell of, ‘Haakonsson!’

  The fall of the torchbearers meant instant darkness, men scrambling up and away above him before the sudden assault, panicked feet slipping on the stair.

  ‘Go!’ yelled Haakon, but his son needed no bidding. Haakon trying to
follow, tripped over a body. Above him there came a clash, cries in the dark. He was up and on.

  There was some light here, torches waving behind the front rank of men. At the back of them Haakon recognized the officer he’d left tied up in a barrel and cursed his previous haste. Then he was among them, dodging a pike thrust, moving his chest away from the jab of a sword. He struck back, using the butt of the axe like a pole into someone’s face. The man fell, but there was another behind him, and another behind him. Unable to use their weapons effectively, father and son blocked the thrusts that came at them, blades locked and the shoving began. Strong though they both were, they were just two. And the ten or more above had the height.

  ‘Yes! Drive them back to hell!’ shouted Lucius Heltzinger, looking to thrust his pike point over the head of his men. Then he changed his grip, placed the length of the shaft against the back of those nearest him, shoved hard. The extra weight caused a bowing and first Haakon, then Erik tumbled back.

  The ground they had gained was lost. Pikes drove at them and they reeled back, parrying desperately. Maria screamed and pulled Erik away from a sword aimed at his face, into the alcove where she had remained. Haakon collapsed into the other one, his axe cutting down on the pike pole, snapping it.

  They were trapped. There was a moment of silence. The men above had halted, a hedge of sharp points now pointing into the alcoves.

  ‘Keep herding them back!’ cried Lucius Heltzinger. ‘We’ll pen these sheep into the foulest region of hell.’

  Haakon looked across, found his son’s eyes. In them he saw what must be within his own. An acknowledgement that this was the end.

  He was about to say it, to yell ‘Farewell’ and throw himself onto the pikes, when a sound came from behind them, from down the stairs. It started low, one word on a single whisper, taken up by a voice, then another, another, building, till a score of voices spoke, more, and it was no longer a whisper but a roar. Bodies in rags, straw-strewn and filth-encrusted, swept up the stairs, screaming out that word now, transformed from the label of their degradation to the banner of their hope.