Captain Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Your stars say this is a more auspicious hour for you. But not for me perhaps. You did not think to consult my stars.’

  ‘Sire,’ I said calmly. ‘I am presently in no man’s employ, so I may reasonably put my own interest first. Once employed, however, I will protect to the utmost the well being of him who pays me.’

  He laughed now and though there was little of humour in the noise, I took it as a signal to launch upon my curriculum vitae, or at least those parts which bore examination. I presented him with the dissertation on cavalry tactics I was taking to Tilly when I was so unfortunately side-tracked at Lutter, and I boasted what was true, that I could take a gang of yokels, who knew just enough of a horse to yoke it with its arse nearest the plough, and within six weeks train them to charge down experienced infantry. Next I spoke in the dozen languages I knew, to demonstrate my usefulness in commanding a disparate army of mercenaries. And all this I interlarded with admiring comments on the organization, reputation, discipline and splendour of his superb force.

  I was irresistible. The trouble was that Wallenstein did not seem to be listening. His head moved slowly from side to side, his great nose raised as though scenting danger. I felt suddenly uneasy. Then as I finished speaking, a movement in the shadowy heights of the gallery to the left of and behind Wallenstein caught my eye. With a great cry of ‘Beware!’ I leapt forward and flung myself at the General so that his chair toppled sideways to the ground and I lay athwart him, shielding him with my body.

  There was an explosion, something struck me full in the middle of my back knocking the breath out of me, men shouted commands, mailed feet rattled over the stone flags, doors opened and banged shut.

  With difficulty, aided by Wallenstein’s attendants from above and the man himself from below, I rose to my feet. Something fell to the floor as I did so and rolled among the open-mouthed onlookers. It was a pistol ball.

  There was a smell of burning cloth and an aide stepped forward with a cup of wine which he poured over my back to quench the sparks remaining from the hot ball.

  ‘My lord,’ I gasped. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Wallenstein as he rose to his feet. ‘And you, Captain Fantom, were you not hit?’

  ‘Hit but not wounded sire,’ I said. ‘Work for my tailor rather than my surgeon.’

  A murmur ran round the spectators and they passed the ball from one to the other, examining it closely and conversing in whispers.

  ‘It seems your stars are conjoint for my good rather than your own,’ said Wallenstein. ‘I have been saved from death while you have just spoilt a good suit of clothes. What say you to that, Captain Fantom?’

  ‘Your good is my good, sire,’ I said. ‘With you dead, where should I find employment? And where would Europe find safety?’

  That did it. Finally he laughed with something like real amusement.

  ‘I will no further defy the stars,’ he said. ‘Captain Fantom, you shall have our commission.’

  Suddenly the shouting which had died away was renewed outside and the sound of marching feet approached. The entrance door burst open and a little knot of soldiers entered half carrying, half dragging in their midst a terrified figure whom I recognized at once. It was my servant, Bela.

  His eyes searched for and found mine, then opened beseechingly wide. I glared back at him in terrible wrath, and indeed if ever a man had cause to be angry with his servant, it was I.

  It was bad enough that the fool, who had been told to fire well clear, should have hit me on the back. (Thank heaven I had prepared the charge myself to couple maximum noise with minimum muzzle speed!) But that he should have let himself be caught was absolutely criminal.

  Worse, I could tell from his expression that I could expect no loyalty from this source. These Hungarians have no more sense of duty than an English Protestant.

  ‘Is this the knave who fired the shot?’ demanded Wallenstein sternly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered the sergeant of the detail. He looked proud of himself as though he had done something clever. Myself, I felt the fellow should have been flogged for dereliction of duty in bringing back his prisoner alive. I could only hope that Wallenstein would act with suitable swiftness and order an instant execution before Bela recovered his powers of speech.

  But the General was a cunning bastard and clearly wanted to discover if this had been a one-man job or whether there was a wider conspiracy against his life.

  ‘Bring the wretch forward,’ he commanded the sergeant.

  Fortunately he spoke in Slovak, a violent-sounding tongue, and Bela must have interpreted this as his death sentence, for as the sergeant attempted to push him forward he wriggled free, dodged desperately among the soldiers for a moment, then deciding in his selfishness that I was his only hope of survival, ran towards me with his arms outstretched.

  Quickly I stepped before the chair in which Wallenstein had reseated himself.

  ‘What!’ I cried. ‘Will you try your villainy again?’

  And, drawing my little ornamental dagger which I keep sharp as a razor, I received him into my arms and slit his throat.

  My new clothes were ruined. Behind they were burned through to the thick leather jerkin I had fortunately put on next to my skin that morning; and now in front I was stained with blood from my chest to my knees.

  I kicked Bela’s body away from me and Rydberg stepped forward to examine the corpse.

  ‘Is not this Bela, your servant?’ he asked. For someone so malicefree, he managed to turn the knife with disturbing accuracy.

  ‘Nay,’ I said. ‘No servant of mine. I have used the boy on errands in the few days I have been here, but nothing more.’

  And turning to Wallenstein, I added sternly, ‘If it is the same youth, then you should know, sire, that I used him no longer when I learned that he was suspected of selling himself in sodomy, aye, and with officers of your own guard, my lord.’

  There was an uneasy stirring amongst these assembled in the room.

  Wallenstein raised his voice.

  ‘Then he died mercifully at your hands, Captain Fantom. For those taken in these unnatural practices should roast slowly on a griddle to let them taste a while in this life what they shall certainly know for ever in the next.’

  It was good mainstream Christian thinking and everyone present voiced approval. I have always found it useful whenever possible in moments of stress to harness to my support those doctrines of faith, political as well as religious, which no man will publicly contradict.

  Well, I had done it. Wallenstein had hired me; not difficult as I was well worth the hiring; but he was also under an obligation. It had been a narrow squeak though! I would have disposed of Bela eventually – only a fool lets a rogue run free with knowledge that can kill him – but having to do it publicly might set some nasty minds working. My crack about buggery being rife among Wallenstein’s officers had won me no friends and some malicious bastard could easily start wondering aloud at the inefficiency of an assassin whose pistol was so poorly primed, it couldn’t send a ball through a man’s skin at forty feet.

  The next day I was summoned to Wallenstein’s presence again and my heart sank when I found him playing with a pistol ball, tossing it into the air and catching it, while he stared at me reflectively. We were alone and I rapidly got as close to him as I dared, resolved that at the first sign of his guard being summoned, I would have my dagger at his throat.

  ‘Captain Fantom,’ he said in a voice which my imagination filled with menace. ‘Take off your doublet.’

  I obeyed. Why not? He could have had me killed in my quarters if he wanted, so there must be some hope still.

  ‘To the skin, to the skin,’ he said impatiently as I stood before him wearing only my soft leather vest. This I removed also and the General rose and walked slowly round me. I stood stock still wondering what he had in mind till at the third circumambulation he touched my back, just between the shoulder blades. Involuntar
ily I started and his hand grasped my shoulder tightly, his nails digging into my skin.

  ‘What, Captain? Think you that I am as those who bought hellfire in the lewd embraces of your dead servant?’

  ‘Nay, sire,’ I protested.

  ‘Nay! Then it must be something other that makes you start from my touch. Some secret perhaps? Something to be kept hidden?’

  The bastard knows, I thought. He’s playing with me. Well, it’ll cost him his life.

  And I let my hand move down to the little dagger that hung on my thigh, the same that had cut Bela’s windpipe.

  ‘Here the ball struck,’ he said from behind me in a low voice. ‘Here where naught but a tiny bruise shows on your skin. How to explain this, eh?’

  ‘I cannot, sire,’ I said.

  ‘Will not, you mean! But you underestimate me, sir. I know all your secret!’

  Silently sliding the dagger from its sheath, I turned to kill him.

  ‘Do not deny it, Captain. You are shot-free. A hard-man!’

  ‘What?’ I said. It was uncharacteristic of me to delay. Once you’ve decided to strike, then quickest is best. But Wallenstein did not look like a man about to order my neck stretched. No. His face was alight with triumph and his eyes shone madly, but not at the anticipation of violence. Rather he looked like some simple priest who has got carried away by his own preaching.

  ‘You are a Croatian, Captain? Aye, I knew it, I knew it.’ Tis not a property of the herb solus, you understand that? Nay, ’tis derived as are all strengths and essences from the conjunction of the planets at the time of germination and the time of gathering. I recalled a hint of it in my books. See here, see here.’

  He led me to his desk and pointed at passages he had marked in the tomes which lay open there. I read swiftly and began to smile inwardly as I let my dagger slip back into its sheath.

  ‘There are many instances. See, a report from Lithuania. Another from Venice. Two such were known at the court of Charlemagne. And the heretic Luther saw a hard-man shot without harm by the Duke of Saxony. ’Tis a liar and a slanderer in matters religious, but in this I believe we may take his word.’

  There’s nothing like being selective in what you believe!

  I had been lucky, I realized. These superstitious men are always eager to uncover evidence to support them in their folly! I had been shot without harm. A reasonable man would say the fault lay in the pistol – a suspicious man might have made a great deal more of it. But the superstitious man had decided that the reason must lie in my skin!

  I had heard stories in my childhood of this marvellous herb which toughened a man’s skin till bullets could not pierce it! But I had put these stories away with others that told of giants and unicorns and horses with wings.

  ‘So, so. You do not deny it, Captain. But tell me, have you supplies of this herb? May it be cultivated in my gardens? With an army of hard-men, a regiment, even, who would withstand my advance?’

  It was time to play things down.

  ‘I fear my lord it is not possible,’ I said.

  ‘Not possible?’

  ‘No. Even when I was a child, the herb was hard to find. It is a delicate growth easily bruised by the gentlest winds and quickly choked by the sparsest grasses. Many attempted to take seeds and plant them, but none succeeded. It is as if a greater gardener than any here below has reserved this plant for his peculiar care.’

  ‘So, so. Well, that holds. Aye, such a treasure would be grossly devalued were it rife. Still, I have you, Captain Fantom. One is better than none. Good, good.’

  He looked at me with possessive pride. I smiled modestly.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now.’

  And going to his desk, he took a pistol from a drawer. I watched uneasily as he walked to a spot some twenty feet away, then turned his eyes still agleam with that crazy enthusiasm.

  ‘Now, a test,’ he said. ‘You do not mind?’

  And the star-crazed turd pointed the bloody pistol at me and pulled the trigger!

  Thank God it was a wheel-lock which must have been lying ready spanned too long, for the spring had gone stiff and did not work. Wallenstein looked at it with an anger which matched my relief.

  ‘Sire,’I said. ‘Spare your powder. The testis a fair one but it is long since I was able to find any of this herb and each shot I’receive lessens the strength of what I have taken in the past.’

  ‘So, so,’ he said. ‘Ah yes. The metal, Saturn drawing up strength from the earth. So it is written.’

  The explanation may have fitted with his half-witted beliefs, but he still looked disappointed for all that and I was mightily relieved when a door opened and an equerry entered. He was well-trained in diplomacy, not one muscle of his face expressing surprise at finding the General with a pistol standing in front of a half-naked man. They talked aside for a moment, then with a curt command from Wallenstein – ‘Wait!’ – they left the room.

  I quickly dressed and after checking which of the doors from the room opened, which were locked, I sat at the desk and browsed through the books thereon. Dull tomes, full of magical nonsense, but if the General held them in regard, then it was best to make their acquaintance.

  It was more than half an hour before the same poker-faced officer returned and invited me to follow him. Perhaps it was those damned books I’d been reading but as I left the room I had a presentiment that my troubles were not over.

  How right I was! The equerry led me to the high vaulted council chamber where my first dramatic meeting with Wallenstein had taken place. The room was crowded. The General sat in his throne-like chair.

  And by his side, reclining on a litter, was D’Amblève, the beautiful boy.

  I felt a small pang of pity for the lad, so pale and haggard he looked. His beauty was for the moment all gone and might never return, for his face had been much battered and his nose broken. He looked like a sickly child preserved to this life by doting parents against the will of God.

  Only his eyes which shone with feverish hate at the sight of me showed him to be a man.

  Here we go again, I thought. Another Fantom trial. There should be a special law book for these!

  But I felt quietly confident. Had I not saved the General’s life? And was I not a precious scientific object in his sight?

  His opening words came as a shock, so harsh and stern they were.

  ‘Captain Fantom, you have deceived us. You are no properly discharged officer, but a deserter, under sentence of death for a vile crime against a fellow officer.’

  I should have thought that my crime, if it were a crime, could hardly be said to be against D’Amblève, but this was no time for such nit-picking.

  ‘These are lies, sire,’ I said. ‘Who speaks them?’

  D’Amblève started to say something, but Wallenstein halted him.

  ‘How may you deny these charges, sir?’ he demanded.

  ‘I am no deserter, General,’ I answered. ‘I fought with distinction at the battle of Lutter and received General Tilly’s own commendation. The army being then in quarters, awaiting news of your own glorious campaign, I was at liberty to take my congè whenever it pleased me, according to old custom, which all here present will agree.’

  They did. Professional officers who took their pay during peace and left the army before a battle deserved contumely and condemnation; but once you had fought, you were your own master.

  ‘As for being condemned,’ I continued, ‘if this is so, it has been done in my absence without benefit of trial, which I take for a great injustice.’

  ‘You could hardly be tried if you had disappeared,’ said Wallenstein sardonically. ‘Why did you flee this great benefit?’

  ‘I knew I stood accused, sire,’ I said, ‘falsely accused, but by one standing so high in the favour of those who would judge me that I left to prevent a taint of unjust dealing from falling on a man I loved.’

  ‘Speak clear, Captain,’ ordered Wallenstein. ‘You mean General Tilly would perv
ert justice to favour his cousin?’

  This was difficult. I suppose there are circumstances when honest plain speaking is beneficial but I have seen too many men tied to stakes on top of piles of brushwood to favour such outspokeness.

  ‘Sire,’ I said. ‘I know the General Tilly to be an honest and upright man. But he is a man for all that. I know his cousin to be a pleasant amiable boy who might yet do well. But he is a boy for all that. And when an honest man makes a boy of seventeen a Colonel of Horse, I admire his family virtues but I do not hang around to let the one be my accuser and the other be my judge when my life is at stake!’

  It was as extreme as I dared to put it, perhaps too extreme. I had knocked six years off D’Amblève’s age, but his was the only voice which would dispute this and that would be against the evidence of everyone’s eyes. I could tell by the reactions of those present that I had made a good case. Professional soldiers distrust promotion on any grounds other than merit.

  But it was Wallenstein whose word would kill or save me. This was no godless democracy! I looked him boldly in the face wearing my best expression of fearless honesty.

  He looked like the Egyptian dog-god, Sirius, about to dispense a judgement. Then he grinned. Just a momentary twitch of the mouth showing canine teeth. And there was no humour in it. What it said was, I see right through you, Fantom you bastard, but I’ll play along.

  He spoke.

  ‘Colonel D’Amblève, you are welcome to my camp. But I must warn you that while he is under my command, Captain Fantom is subject only to the disciplines which I shall enforce, and any attack on his person by you or your agents shall be regarded as an attack on me. Let all men know that officers of my army shall be answerable to myself and my duly appointed courts alone. We are a just force fighting in a just cause. More even-handed justice will not be found outside these limits. Gentlemen, to your duties.’

  And that was that. He had made a decision which was tremendously popular with the men who served him for it confirmed their status as the true rulers of wherever they happened to be.