Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘You’ve not been fighting again? I won’t allow it.’

  He said nothing, held out his hand still. Reluctantly, she reached into the purse, pulled out one small gold coin.

  ‘Just you be careful. We don’t want the merchandise marked, do we?’

  She placed the florin in his outstretched palm, running a cracked nail along his brown inner arm. She chuckled as he withdrew his hand, hid the coin in his clothes.

  She slid out the door, beckoning him to follow. He glanced around the room once more, looking for a bottle he could conceal but found none. His eyes, finally resting again on the mirror, encountered his own gazing back.

  ‘Dog,’ he said, sticking out his tongue. ‘Indian!’

  The great bell of Notre Dame struck, and at its toll the roaring began. Anne had first heard it in Southwark, from Uriah’s bear gardens, and thought she must be back there now, this conviction curling her up on the bed in fear; for if she was in London still, heretics were yet to burn, the rack was being prepared and Jean Rombaud would never come.

  The animal cries drew her, the shouts of a crowd, and she was walking into the arena. But it changed as she looked; no longer circles of seats filled with jeering drunkards, she moved now through a masque, interlocking couples weaving in dance, their faces concealed in leather and lace. Glimpsed through joined palms, beyond rich hooped dresses and sword hilts encrusted with jewels, something dark flitted. She had to reach it, thread through this maze of elegance. Yet it remained elusive, beyond sight and touch. Finally, as if they’d planned the move all along, the dancers cleared and she was alone in the centre of a circle of silent, masked nobility. Then she heard a whimper and there was a bear, attached by golden chains to a post. The animal raised his sad eyes to her, lifted paws from which the claws had been cruelly gouged. She took a step toward him, then another, raising her own hand as she went, reaching toward the bloodied paw. Finger and fur were a handspan apart when she heard the slipping of the leashes, the snarling, saw the blur of teeth as the first hound leapt past her.

  ‘Free him! Free the bear!’ she cried as the bell tolled the seventh hour of the evening in the tower of Notre Dame and her father rose from his chair and took Anne in his arms. He parted the veil of her black hair and looked into her face, into the starting eyes. Then he cradled her head to his chest.

  ‘Hush! Hush now, child!’ He rocked her as she straddled the land between sleep and wakefulness.

  ‘We must free the bear, Father!’

  ‘Of course we must. Shh! Shh, child!’

  He held his daughter close to him and listened both to her wild heartbeat and to the bell’s deep echo dying away.

  Why were they in Paris?

  For a rendezvous only a fool would try to keep! Who knew where Haakon and the Fugger were now? Almost certainly still stuck outside the gates of a Roman prison. And if they weren’t in Paris, how long could he and Anne wait? He had agreed to come because such a vast city seemed a good place to hide … and because he seemed to have lost all capacity to make decisions. But he had no illusions – his son would be close behind them, days, if not hours away. He had seen Gianni’s fanaticism at the burnings, heard it in the confessional. He would not give up, as Jean would not have given up at his age. Not only the sins of the father are visited upon the son.

  Above all, Anne had insisted on Paris, with that look of total certainty. He had learned that he could not oppose that look, not after all that had happened in the Tower; not when the shape he was feeling as he comforted his daughter, nestled in its bandage prison at the base of her back, was the skeleton of a six-fingered hand. Her look, that certainty, had brought the hand to them, had governed their escape. She would choose what should be done with it now. And she had not decided yet, that much he knew.

  She pulled back from his embrace. ‘How long have I slept?’

  ‘From dawn till now and I only a little less. Your cries woke me. You had a nightmare.’

  She looked beyond him, back into the vision of her dream. ‘It was not a nightmare, Father. I think it was a prophecy.’

  He smiled. ‘To free a bear? For that is what you were calling out.’

  ‘To free …’ She paused, her brow wrinkling. ‘I don’t know if I can explain it but … I think there is a bear … beyond the bear. Some creature, a person. And that person is tied to a post, in chains, even if they are not real. And they are golden.’

  ‘The chains?’

  ‘Yes!’ Anne gripped his arm excitedly. ‘This bear is one that lives among nobility. I saw them dance!’

  Jean shook his head. ‘I do not understand. Do you wish to go to a bear baiting, is that it? I thought you abhorred them?’

  ‘I do. But this is no ordinary baiting. No ordinary bear.’

  She got up, walked to the window, looked out. When she looked back her face was flushed with excitement.

  ‘Father,’ she said, ‘where is the King’s Palace in Paris?’

  He was about to deny her, to caution and oppose, when he saw that look, the certainty. He sighed and began to tell her.

  In the gardens of the Louvre, torches lit a scene of carnage. Amidst the carcasses, unsated scavengers stalked, ripping at any overlooked roasted flesh. All that remained of the ox that had stood centre in the tableau were its spreadeagled ribs, thrust up like the spars of a beached ship. Stuffed within the beast had been a whole lamb, which had contained a hare whose remains were still being poked by questing fingers searching for one more puzzle box to open, one last tender surprise.

  Swans’ feathers had settled like a snowstorm, for the three birds had been roasted then sewn back into their finery and pieces of down still clung to many a bloodied face; while the walls of the pastry Notre Dame were quite overthrown, eager hands having long since ripped the choir stalls apart where choristers of sparrow, thrush, starling and quail had revolved on iron spits.

  The glazed eyes of the insatiable now turned to the final offering of the feast. It sat on the high table directly behind the King and flush to the walls of the palace, thrusting spun sugar towers twice a man’s height into the air, its flaked pastry and cream battlements perfectly reproducing his Majesty’s newly commissioned fortress at Aix-en-Provence in a sublime combination of the architect’s and the confectioner’s art.

  Tagay looked down from the high table upon the besmeared faces of the subjects that watched the King, awaiting his signal; no one could begin the final assault until he did. And since Henri was in heated debate with the Papal legate, Borromeo, it did not look as if the feasters would be storming the sugar battlements any time soon.

  Tagay gnawed half-heartedly at an ox rib. He had neither eaten nor drunk much. Partly it was the warning look from the Marquise, shot from her position beside a sumptuously dressed Duchess, whose plentiful jewels over her revealing bosom highlighted both her wealth and her age. The Marquise had shown her to Tagay before as his mark for the evening.

  ‘She’s very refined, the Duchess of Epais-Rouland. So watch your drinking!’

  They are all very refined, Tagay had thought sourly, until the doors of their boudoirs close.

  The expectations of the evening were not all that kept him from the wine he yet craved. His dream still hovered at the edges of his mind. He had been unable to shake it all day. It was as if, from the corner of his eyes, he still saw a bear stretching out his arms.

  ‘My Little Bear is distracted tonight, is he not?’

  All within earshot immediately ceased their own conversations to listen. It was always thus, when Henri of France spoke.

  Tagay looked up at the King from his stool. He inclined his head but did not reply.

  ‘And who is this pretty little brown fellow?’

  The Papal legate had leaned down, his fat and florid face heated with food and conversation. Tagay had heard the words ‘war’ and ‘Spain’, common words lately around the King’s table. Before he had returned to his own thoughts he had gathered that this representative of the new Pope in R
ome was trying to persuade his master into another conflict. He also realized he was being used now as an interlude in this debate.

  Henri also leaned down, his fine-boned features and trimmed beard a contrast to the ruddy Italian.

  ‘This is my pet bear, your eminence. The only representative at my court of my colonies in New France. Or Can-a-da, as he calls it. Is that not right, Tagay?’

  Tagay nodded, kept his silence.

  ‘Ah, yes, another one of your possessions yet threatened by our mutual enemy of Spain.’ The Italian made his point then returned to his study. ‘He looks like one of those Asiatics who come with Russian delegations to the Holy Court. And yet he comes from the Americas?’

  Henri nodded. ‘My good and loyal Breton servant, Jaques Cartier, brought him back on his first voyage, oh, twenty years ago. Or rather brought his mother, for this rascal was a stowaway … in her womb!’ The King laughed as did all within hearing. ‘Alas, his mother and all my other Indians died. Only my Little Bear proved hardy. Everyone loves him here – is that not true, ladies?’ Another laugh, sycophantically echoed. ‘Tagay, speak some of your language for the legate. Really, it is marvellously strange. Speak, Tagay. Give his eminence his full title in your tongue.’

  Tagay stood and bowed, then spoke in the language of his tribe, the Tahontaenrat. ‘Your ugliness informs me that your mother was a beaver who was sodomised by a moose.’

  The legate clapped his hands, delighted. ‘We must send for more of these Little Bears, Majesty.’

  ‘I desire it too. But a colony we tried to start there failed. We will commission another expedition, and soon. It is our Christian duty, for they are devil-worshipping heathens to a man. Yes, French government and Catholic morals. That’s what my Little Bear’s people need, eh Tagay?’

  Tagay bowed. ‘You would honour us, Mighty Father.’

  ‘He calls you “Father”! How enchanting! And his French is enchanting too.’ Borromeo clapped his hands. ‘A worthy crusade, Majesty, to bring his people the language and the cross. Perhaps after our Spanish problem is solved?’

  With these words, the two men renewed their former conversation. Tagay reached for wine to pour over his anger, soothe his sadness, but it gave no comfort. Though she had been dead two years, the thought of his mother always hurt him. And he was hurt every day.

  He looked down, saw the Marquise glower at him so he raised the wine and toasted her, then drained the glass in one.

  ‘Now!’

  They had waited for the patrols to turn each their respective corners, the one onto the embankment of the Seine, the second to the Louvre’s front wall. Other guards would appear any moment, but this interim was theirs.

  They ran from the darkness of the alley to where the branch of the huge Cedar of Lebanon crested the palace wall. As in the dungeon passages, Anne bent with interlocked hands and Jean stepped, reaching through the soft needles to the branch beneath. He swung himself up, locked his legs, then reached down. Anne leapt, clung to his arm, and with a heave he pulled her up. The first guards walked around the corner just as her leg disappeared into the canopy and they waited till the helmets and pikes passed beneath them before they scrambled along the branch that spanned the wall.

  The gardens sloped steeply down and away from them, the tree’s trunk set back from the wall, making the jump down too extreme. They were forced to crawl further along the branch to the trunk itself. There, a junction led them on, down another branch to where a second cedar overlapped. With some difficulty they straddled the gap between trees, but none of the branches were close enough to the lower ones to allow descent to the ground. If anything they were being taken higher.

  ‘Anne!’ hissed Jean. ‘We have to get down somehow. If we are seen up here …’

  His voice trailed off. She knew the danger as well as he. They would be taken for assassins, Huguenot fanatics who had attempted the life of more than one French King in his palace. Their only hope of concealment lay in mixing with the servants. They had spent most of their remaining coins on appropriate caps, smocks and an apron that barely concealed the sword strapped to his back.

  She kept crawling forward, upward. This vast tree led to one more and the further they progressed, the louder the sound of the feast ahead of them grew.

  ‘Father. I think I see something.’

  He joined her near the branch end, which dipped alarmingly under their weight. He peered through the gloom.

  ‘The wall of the palace. Can you see a balcony, or a way down?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to him and he could see well enough to note her gleaming eyes. ‘But I can see a way up.’

  They crawled back to the trunk, shimmied up to the next level, followed that branch out again. They came to the wall and perceived guttering, a roof sloping away beyond it.

  ‘We can’t climb onto the roof, Anne. It will be treacherous with rain. Too dangerous. Let us go back. There must be another way to the ground.’

  He’d half-turned when he realized she wasn’t following.

  ‘Anne, come!’

  ‘Father,’ she said, her head angled over, ‘do you hear it?’

  He listened. All he could hear was the continuous buzzing of voices, some hounds giving tongue, a louder shout breaking through some steady cheering.

  ‘I don’t hear anything other than—’

  ‘Shh!’

  Then he did hear it, unmistakable, within the uproar. The deep-throated growl of a frightened animal.

  ‘A bear!’ she cried. ‘A bear, Father. I knew it!’

  As she spoke, Anne sprang from the branch, hands scrabbling for a purchase on the eaves. One hand slipped, but the other managed to grab hold, and she swung her legs up and scrambled onto the slick tiles.

  ‘Anne!’ he called again to halt her, but she was gone, slipping along toward the front of the building. In a moment she had disappeared.

  Cursing, Jean knew he had no choice but to follow her.

  The King had decided on a surprise interlude prior to the storming of the confectionery castle. There hadn’t been many such entertainments lately due to the sustained demand for them and the ever diminishing supply. But while the nobility of France picked over the carcasses and sucked bone marrow from the scraps, his Majesty’s chief bearward, Grillot, attended to the preparations. Before the palace, directly below the sugared walls they all craved, a pre-dug hole was uncovered, a sturdy wooden stake thrust into it and wedged tight. Thick chains ending in manacles were secured to it with iron pins. Sawdust was scattered in a wide circle with the pole as its centre.

  His steward advised him when all was ready. Henri rose and there was an immediate silence – for even in their gorging everyone kept an eye on the King.

  ‘Nobles and Ladies of France,’ he declared. ‘In honour of the feast of St Genesius and the visit to our court of our new Father’s holy representative, Cardinal Borromeo, we have arranged a special entertainment. We hope it will give you appetite for the ransack of the sweet castle to follow. For see what stands between you and it!’

  He descended from the high table, and everyone rose and crowded forward. There were bursts of excited whisperings, acclaim. They spread around the circumference of the sawdust circle. Everyone knew what it meant, everyone recognized the chain-wrapped stake at its centre. Everyone, including Tagay.

  He had risen like the rest when the King did, but when he had followed the sweep of the royal arm and seen what lay below him, he had sunk down again as soon as the King left his dais. Soon he was alone, his back to the gathering crowd. He could not leave but he did not have to watch. He could drink more, attempt to achieve what he had failed to so far. All night he had remained stubbornly sober. He reached for a flagon.

  He could not block his ears. As soon as the King’s feet touched the ground, the signal was given and the dogs, which had been held in a dark kennel and whipped into silence, were released into the night air, pulling to the length of their chains with a chorus of deep-throated yelps.
A collective gasp arose when they appeared, for these were not the hounds they were all used to.

  ‘A gift from his Holiness the Pope,’ the cardinal was saying to those near him, ‘from his native land. Neapolitan mastiffs – the finest fighting dogs in the world!’

  Tagay heard and, despite himself, turned. The beasts were like nothing he had ever seen. Soot grey from muzzle to back paw, they came up to the waists of the handlers struggling to rein them back. Their heads seemed to be all jaw, tendrils of salivation streaming from huge and fearsome teeth. Their shoulders and haunches were bunched muscle. Black eyes rolled in reddened sockets. Tagay saw more than one noble or lady cross themselves, for the dogs looked as if they had sprung fresh from Hades.

  A different sound, deeper even than the baying, a roar of pain and confusion set the hounds yelping louder and all the nobility crying out. Tagay tried to turn away, failed, his hand reaching behind him, knocking over his full cup of wine. His eyes, like all there, were locked on the corner of the house.

  With another anguished roar the bear appeared, dragging the two men who held his neck in rigid pincers. A third pulled on a thick chain wound about the animal’s waist, his feet gouging trails in the lawn, while another sought to control its movements with the torches he thrust forward. The animal was big and male, its rush carrying him into the middle of the sawdust circle. The crowd gave back, ladies clutching at the arms of their escorts, the men trying to simultaneously thrust their peacock chests forward while moving their bodies out of reach. The mastiffs jerked the length of their chains, their howls doubling in volume. Somehow, and after a great struggle, the bearwards attached the bear to the stake by its waist chain. The pincers were removed and the men fell back, one tumbling to the ground as the enraged bear ran and slashed at him, his paw catching a flailing leg, tipping him over. Tagay saw that, as usual, the bear had had its claws ripped out. He was surprised to see that the bear’s teeth remained. His Majesty must have noted the fearsome jaws of the mastiffs and decided on a more even contest.

  Contest? There would be no contest. There would only be one loser – the bear. The spectator’s joy came from seeing how long the bear could last, how many of the hounds it would defeat, in singles, pairs, threes, before the whole pack was released. Tagay could see bets already being laid, everyone caught up in the fever of it, clutching at each other in an ecstasy of excitement. When the first mastiff was let slip, a cry of release as in lovemaking rose from the crowd.