Captain Fantom

by Reginald Hill

  Oxenstjerna now took me aside and said he felt it best if I departed without delay or ceremony. His despatches for Wallenstein were ready and though he, like most reasonable men, accepted that a king riding armourless and almost alone into the midst of the enemy was likely to be killed, these rumours of foul play might inflame other fools to desperate deeds. I had the feeling that he was delighted to have got his hands on Count Iwan. I was a complication he wanted out of the way so that the Count could be prosecuted for murder of the totally innocent Frenchman.

  I made no demur but left at once. If the threat of assassination were not enough to send me on my way, the sight of Ingrid nursing the infant princess and looking my way with hungry eyes certainly was. Thank God the heir to the throne was not a boy, I thought. The poor little sod would have been ruined before he reached manhood!

  I rode south to Malmo, preferring to trust myself to the treacherous Baltic as little as possible and landed in Schleswig with a great sense of relief, partly because Sweden was behind me and partly because I have small taste for sailing. Even less fond of the sea was Orfeo though he felt it beneath his dignity to admit to fear. Laura I had left behind with her foal Petrarch, who was still too young I felt for such a hard trip as this. I had bought on my way north a two-year-old stallion whom I called Luke. Mouse-dun in colour, standing scarcely fifteen hands, he seemed a cross between a Halfinger and a Norwegian Fjord, with a good admixture of God knows what else! Something about his short broad head had reminded me of Osman and his deep chest and strong quarters gave promise of great endurance. If he proved to have half the qualities of Osman, who had been equally indifferent to heights, depths, rock, sand, mud or oceans, he would be a bargain. But he would need a great deal of work before he was fit for even the simplest of military duties and I had left him stabled at Schleswig. When I went to pick him up, I found him in a sorry state. The rogue whose stables he was resting in replied insolently when I accused him of neglecting his duties, so I gave him his own left ear as a fee, and rode slowly back to rejoin Wallenstein’s army which I discovered massacring Swedish troops in Silesia. So much for my mission! But that was politics and I have never let myself be troubled by politics. It’s like falling in love with a whore; you die betrayed or poxed. No, there were other matters to trouble me more than who our enemy was.

  First, D’Amblève was back. Almost the first sound I heard was the tintinnabulation of those ridiculous spurs he still affected, and when we encountered he regarded me with a kind of sneering triumph that filled me with foreboding. Discreet enquiries revealed that my renegade monk had been found in a ditch, surrounded by his own guts. But disposal of a mere assassin could not wholly account for D’Amblève’s feline self-satisfaction.

  But worse than D’Amblève’s presence was the appearance of Wallenstein. I think he’d finally gone so far round the twist that recovery was not possible. Physically he was bent and emaciated so that those big bones of his cheeks and his nose stuck our like buttresses on a gutted church. His lips were a vivid red against his dull grey skin and I suspect he used some kind of colouring, like a vain beldame. Everywhere he went he was accompanied by astrologers and he would hardly piss without consulting them. His temper was always short, but now he flew into fits of crazy rage at trifles and ordered men executed for trivial or imaginary offences. He had become obsessed with noise. The cobbled streets around his quarters were covered in straw to muffle the passage of wagons, cocks were strangled if they crowed within earshot, and even distinguished visitors would find themselves threatened or sometimes even beaten into silence if they spoke too loud for his comfort. The only good thing about all this was that he particularly abominated the jingling of spurs and would allow none of his officers in earshot who wore them. This cut D’Amblève off from his company as the fool refused to discard the monstrosities he wore, though perhaps this very refusal should have given me more cause for fear.

  I saw Wallenstein just long enough to be given another mission and I accepted the chance of getting away from his court again with some relief. This time I was sent ‘recruiting’. In fact, what I was really doing was touting commissions about the country with orders to sell them to whoever had money. Wallenstein’s once limitless coffers were growing empty and he was willing to sell indiscriminately what he had once bestowed only after the greatest deliberation. I didn’t like the job, but at least it got me out of the way again, so I saddled up once more and rode off.

  My wanderings across the face of Germany during the next months are of little interest here. I didn’t do much good but I didn’t do much harm either and I enjoyed myself where I could. News from Bohemia was rare and confused. Had I had all my horses with me, I might have given way to the temptation to cut loose and drift down into Spain and France to see which was offering the best terms for soldiers in the war that must surely come between them. Anyway, horses apart, I suppose I owed Wallenstein some loyalty and, more importantly he owed me a great deal of money, so I turned back in November and having spent Christmas in Lebus where I converted half a dozen Protestant virgins, I headed south early in January. It was a journey I made without enthusiasm and even Orfeo who had so long obeyed me unquestioningly seemed to take each step under protest. He was, I suddenly realized, an old horse now and I owed him better than a long trek in the middle of winter. Luke was with me too, full of energy and amiable curiosity. He was the most willing of animals, though far from the brightest, and I would have been better off with Petrarch who under my careful tuition was maturing every day. But Laura had been unwell when the time came for me to leave Pilsen and had seemed so distressed when I made preparation to saddle Petrarch that I had decided to leave them together.

  I rode slowly, sheltering whenever the weather was bad, which was frequent. I had no incentive to hurry. Only a fool rides apace with bad news, and my news for Wallenstein was that no one was rallying to his banner any more. I realized just how right ‘no one’ had been when I reached Prague in February and discovered that the Emperor had issued a proclamation dismissing Wallenstein from his command.

  Confused news was coming out of Pilsen. Wallenstein was going mad, executing all who opposed him, forcing his officers to sign declarations of loyalty daily. I discounted most of what I heard, but this still left enough to worry me. Again I thought of cutting my losses and declaring for the Emperor. But Wallenstein wasn’t finished yet and it would be stupid to transfer my loyalties prematurely. I was owed money. Also (and this again was the deciding factor) Laura and Petrarch were at Pilsen. So off I went.

  I reached Pilsen on 23 February to discover that Wallenstein with about a thousand men had fled to Eger where all loyal officers were commanded to join him. This was the beginning of the end, I could feel it in my bones, but again reasons presented themselves to follow. First, he had money. Everything of value they could lay their hands on had been removed. Rumour put the cash alone in excess of a hundred thousand gulden.

  Secondly Petrarch had been taken.

  Laura I found abandoned in her stable. Her condition had worsened. She was coughing hollowly and her breathing was noisy and full of pain. I spent the following day with her and by the end of it, I knew there was no hope. To lose such friends as Laura and Osman both in the same year was almost more than I could bear. These poets who write of lovers’ pangs are self-deluding fools. They weep because they are rejected or betrayed. I wept because I was faced with absolute trust.

  That night I shot her and buried her in the iron earth, and the following morning I set out after Wallenstein and his fleeing men.

  I arrived at the Fortress of Eger late in the afternoon of 25 February. I was greeted politely but coldly by the two Scottish officers who commanded the fort, Gordon and Leslie, but this frosty Scots welcome was warmed for me by the discovery in their mess of the one good soul (including all the Stuarts) to come out of that ball-freezing country.

  ‘Lauder!’ I cried. ‘Why in the name of divine justice aren’t you dead?’

 
; He regarded me without surprise.

  ‘I’m like you, Fantom,’ he answered. ‘The Almighty doesn’t want us and the de’il reckons we’re mair use to him here on earth than stinking up his fires.’

  I could see that this light use of the divinity did not please Leslie and Gordon who had a hard Protestant cast of feature, but an Irish colonel called Butler whom I knew vaguely took them aside and Lauder accompanied me to the stables where I now sought Petrarch.

  Lauder, it turned out, had been serving with Colonel Butler whose regiment had been on its way to Prague when they fell in with Wallenstein’s force marching to Eger.

  ‘Well met!’ I said. ‘I’m almost as glad to see you as I will be my horse. Petrarch! Petrarch!’

  I heard an answering whinny and a few moments later was examining my young horse.

  ‘He has been well cared for anyway,’ I said. ‘I’m not yet sure whether I should thank or shoot whoever took him. But tell me, Lauder, what’s the news? If you have been here two days, why, you must know everything that’s worth knowing!’

  Lauder looked at me oddly and seemed uncertain how to answer.

  ‘Come, man,’ I said. ‘What’s so startling that you cannot tell me?’

  This time he would have spoken but a sound was now heard which sent my hand to my sword and set me stepping back into a dark corner away from the light of the lantern.

  It was the jingling of spurs.

  ‘Captain Fantom!’ said D’Amblève. ‘Good evening to you, sir.’

  He smiled at me as he spoke. Thirty now, he still kept his boyish beauty.

  ‘I see you’ve found your horse. I’m glad, and glad too that you have arrived in time for the banquet tonight.’

  ‘You took my horse?’ I said.

  ‘For safe keeping only,’ he protested. ‘I knew you would rejoin your master eventually. Have you seen him yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Then I would suggest you do so. News of your arrival has been given to him and I can guess how eagerly he looks for his hard-man.’

  There could be some truth in this and I had no desire to offend Wallenstein in his present uncertain mood.

  As I moved away, Lauder made to accompany me, but D’Amblève held out his arm in restraint.

  ‘A word with you, Captain Lauder,’ he said. ‘Till later, Fantom. We’ll meet at the banquet.’

  As I made my way to Wallenstein’s quarters, I mused on what new attempt on my life the lovely lad was plotting. I could see no other explanation of his good mood.

  But when I saw Wallenstein, all other thoughts went out of my head. Bent, feverish, shaking, he looked a very picture of desperation. I smelt disaster in that room. I did not need his battalion of soothsayers to work it out for me.

  He spoke with an optimism that was worse than despair.

  ‘Arnim is coming,’ he assured me. ‘And Bernhard. And Oxenstjerna himself will move when the time is ripe. Your embassies have not been in vain, no, no. I saw in the sky the other night a falling star of great brightness which fell far, far, from behind the moon at its zenith down beyond Ursus Major. At first I took it for my own self falling, but when I had a horoscope cast, it was revealed it was not me, but the Emperor. You note he falls in the North. Well, is it not obvious that here are signified the Swedes?’

  I nodded agreement though I was distressed to hear the former champion of the True Faith so dependent upon the goodwill of heretics.

  He fell now into a reverie from which I awoke him by asking if he would attend the banquet.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I am not well for such things. But you must be hungry, Fantom, hard-man though you be. Hard-man! Ah! Had I but a regiment of such as you! A platoon even. The sky would have blazed with falling stars! Still, I have one. Yes, it is enough, I think. One may still be enough.’

  He nodded and smiled. It was the nearest to a real smile I think that I ever saw on those painted lips. Then he embraced me and turned away to his desk which was littered with open tomes. I had no doubt of their subject matter.

  Poor old bastard! I thought as I made ready for the banquet. I was in a mood for merriment now as an antidote to that old sick man, stinking of death. I was glad he wasn’t attending. Even at his brightest and best, he was a poor head of a festal board.

  I went back to check my horses and also to get a feel of the geography of this place. I had been here before during the campaigns, but it is best to make sure that things remain as they have been. Talking to Petrarch kept me longer than I intended and I feared I might be late for the feast.

  Then as I made my way to the banqueting hall, I met Lauder again. I had a feeling he was lurking on purpose to meet me.

  ‘What, are you not hungry, you old shagbag?’ I asked impatiently for I could hear the rattle of dishes and smell roasting meat.

  ‘Ye’ll tak a dram wi’ me,’ said Lauder peremptorily.

  ‘A thousand!’ I answered pulling loose from his grip. ‘But let’s join the others while the best wine remains.’

  ‘Hold,’ said Lauder and began talking rapidly in a low voice but what he said I did not catch for at the end of the stone-flagged passage in which we stood I caught a glimpse of the most desirable woman I had ever seen. A lesser man might have fallen on his knees and worshipped but the music that sounded in my ears was not the solemn notes of the church organ.

  ‘Who is that creature?’ I demanded.

  Lauder turned and looked.

  ‘That is Mistress Gordon,’ he said. ‘The custodian’s wife.’

  The memory of that stern Scottish face interrupted the trumpets for a moment. There was a dreadful merciless righteousness there. To screw that man’s wife in his own castle was the act of a suicidal madman. I tried to take command of myself, but the woman had disappeared now and I found my feet taking me irresistibly in pursuit.

  ‘Stay,’ said Lauder, coming alongside me. I looked at him angrily, expecting useless words of warning, threats, exhortations.

  Instead he said simply, ‘I’ll show you her chamber.’

  This was no moment to question an act of friendship, however unexpected. I followed him with explosive impatience till he stopped and pointed silently at a door. I grasped his hand for a second – I could spare no longer – then I flung open the door and rushed in.

  She had her back to me and before she could turn, I had my arms under her shoulders and my hands locked behind her neck in a grip I had learned of the Turkish wrestlers. But she was surprisingly strong. She staggered but did not go down. Indeed she countered by twisting her hip into my belly and trying to throw me with a half-buttock. For a couple of seconds we spun like a top, then I changed my grip to a simple armlock with my knee in the small of her back. She was shrieking most lustily now, but such was the din from the distant banquet that her cries passed unnoticed. She now tried to back heel me in the groin. She knew where the danger lay, that one. I could not afford the best of three falls. A quick submission was what I needed. So I released my hold. Her own momentum carried her forward on to the bed. I leapt on top, knocking the breath from her body and took her from behind.

  So strong was my passion for this exquisite creature that my ordnance scarcely came to bear on her citadel before it was sending forth its victory salvo. I rose hastily, recognizing my danger now. She lay face down still, her pimply red buttocks flexing gently. She looked less attractive than before. Strange how beauty fades, I mused. But this was no time for philosophy. The important thing was that she had not seen me and though I must always be suspect in such a case as this, yet if I could mingle with the revellers unnoticed, I might still escape detection.

  In any case, I assured myself as I left the room, she will probably not speak out. Gordon would avenge the honour done to his name, but he also looked the type who would put away a defiled wife.

  So it was with a fair amount of confidence that I made my way to the banqueting chamber.

  The sounds of revelry seemed to have died down, as if the last gre
at outburst had exhausted the feasters. I hoped I had not missed the fun.

  Then I reached the door and saw what I had missed.

  The huge table was weighed down with good things, haunches of venison, roast fowl, steaming pies, flagons of wine.

  And human bodies. Blood, brains and severed limbs were strewn across the board. The air steamed and stank. Not a man sitting at that table but was dead. Some had arisen and turned and taken their death wounds in the front. But most had died as they ate or drank. I saw men I had served and fought beside with their heads resting on their platters, the unchewed food jammed in their teeth like the apple in the boar’s mouth at the centre of the table.

  There were still living men in that room, standing with bloody weapons, looking at each other wildly and with the first signs of shame as the fury of their action died away. Leslie and Gordon were there, and Colonel Butler, too. I wished they’d had twenty wives apiece so I could have ravished them all. And two other faces I recognized. Lauder, impassive as ever, but with his sword also a quickly darkening red. And D’Amblève who looked around in a kind of wheyfaced hysteria like a novitiate priest who has been carried away and screwed his first nun. Suddenly I understood what lay behind the uncharacteristic reactions of both of them to my arrival.

  I backed away quietly. Nothing but death waited in that room for me. All Wallenstein’s closest associates lay on or under that table. Everyone except me – and Wallenstein himself! I turned and ran swiftly to the General’s room. He might still be unharmed and I had not yet been paid. But I arrived just in time to see a group of soldiers led by a fiery Irishman called Devereux break down the door and as I turned and fled, Wallenstein’s death cry followed me down the corridor.

  1635–40