Gate of the Dead

by David Gilman

  The ongoing hostilities against the Papal States had in the past secured them riches from the success of their own condottieri, but there were few gains to be had these days. Bernabò pulled on the robe but left it untied as he slumped onto the bed next to a drunken whore.

  ‘She has the best arse of them all,’ he grinned, the temper gone almost as quickly as it had arrived. He slapped the woman’s rear and then bent and kissed the inflamed mark. He sighed and rolled his shoulders, letting the tension ease.

  ‘Florence is too beautiful to destroy,’ said Galeazzo, sitting on a stool by the fire. He tipped a half-empty bottle to his lips. ‘Art and sculpture define our civilization.’

  ‘Fucking and killing define our civilization!’ roared Bernabò and laughed until his face turned red with apoplexy, which made Galeazzo think for a moment he would choke and fall dead to the floor. But Bernabò wheezed and spat and then sighed with great satisfaction. ‘We can hurt them – a little at least. Chop one hand off. Maybe an arm,’ he said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Galeazzo said wearily, hunger pangs from his missed dinner beginning to feed his irritability.

  Bernabò mouthed a word, making his lips exaggerate it.

  Galeazzo was amused enough to smile. ‘What? You drunken fool.’

  Bernabò put a finger to his lips. ‘We can only whisper the name,’ he said, making a game of it.

  ‘Am I to guess? What? You’ve poisoned the Pope? You’ve sent him a whore with the plague? You’ve pissed in the Arno?’

  Bernabò stuck out his tongue like a finger from the orifice, then curled it back to his lips. ‘Bl-a-ck-st-one.’

  One man stood between them and Florence and that was the Englishman. There were others like him – he had only a small number of men, fewer than a thousand on contract. But they held ground that could not be taken. The attrition for the Visconti and their allies would be too great should they ever try. Besides, they were not ready to attack Florence. Not yet. But they would be, one day, and if Thomas Blackstone were not there to help defend the city it would be an advantage.

  Their own mercenaries had fallen foul of the Englishman on a number of occasions, but none of his actions had threatened their well-being. Despite his reputation it was obvious that Florence did not have the manpower to come after them. Last winter Blackstone’s men had slain hundreds of theirs who had been stupid enough to raid a small, worthless town in the Tuscan hills. They had paid the price and their commanders had returned to Milan and Pavia in shame. It should have been in fear – for retribution awaited them. These men would have done better to desert and make their home elsewhere. They had broken an agreement made with Florence and trust had been left lying in the bloodshed on those hillsides. Now there could be no further incursion to collect debts and Santa Marina had fallen under the protection of Blackstone. To strike back would be costly and pointless for such a worthless heap of stones. The Visconti executed two of the four commanders who had ridden in the vanguard that day, but spared the others. One was a German who sold his services and those of his men to the Visconti and despite the loss that day they considered him valuable. Had they had any romantic inclination towards chivalry they would have called von Lienhard their champion. No one had bested him in any challenge. The other commander was a favourite cousin – albeit a bastard relation. The Visconti were no strangers to the murder of family members, but in this instance to have killed him would have caused yet another rift among the clan and neither brother was ready for another internecine war. When the time was right alliances would be made and Florence and its treasures would be taken. The Vipers’ spies were in brothels and churches, city-states’ council chambers and bedrooms of the perverted, embedded like ticks in a dog’s skin.

  ‘What do you have?’ Galeazzo asked, wanting the stupid game to end.

  ‘An English courier came through the mountains. He carried no letter of safe conduct. He died...’ Bernabò grinned. ‘...after a while. He had destroyed the sealed document he was to deliver before my men caught him, but he had been sent to Bardi’s priest in Florence.’

  ‘Torellini?’

  Bernabò nodded.

  ‘So the English reach out to the priest. So what? It means nothing. They deal with the bankers there.’

  ‘There’s more. Blackstone is leaving Italy. There was another messenger who sailed south.’

  ‘You have him?’

  ‘I have my assassin.’

  ‘Even he cannot reach the Englishman,’ said Galeazzo. ‘We don’t even know if Torellini made contact with him.’

  The twisted face smirked, his quivering tongue flicking from his lips like a snake. ‘Yes we do.’

  Galeazzo held on to his patience. ‘Enough, brother. Tell me what you have.’

  ‘A runaway slave.’

  *

  The assassin was an aberration, especially to Bernabò Visconti. The killer led a chaste life, never knowingly seen with man or woman for the pleasures of sex. Bernabò didn’t care. The self-imposed restraint was a ligature that choked distraction. His was a life that took gratification from death. If ever Bernabò Visconti felt the emotion of love, it was for this man – his perfect assassin.

  The killer was expert in waiting long, patient hours until the perfect moment to slay his victim presented itself. Sometimes the strike was quickly taken, shocking in its audacity, other times he would infiltrate the inner circle of the man who was to die, a master of simple disguise that made him both visible but unsuspected. He was versed in all weapons, accomplished with sword and mace, but he favoured the knife. It was a special knife, the hilt and grip crafted for balance, long enough in the blade to penetrate, sharp to sever and small enough to conceal. The great craftsmen of Pistoia were renowned for such skills and it was always their knives that he used. He knew in particular of one old man who was renowned as a master blade maker.

  Years before he had travelled to the small town, which lay between Florence and her enemy Lucca; it was a place where men killed frequently in vendettas, encouraged by the Florentines to wage their vicious feuds within their own streets and piazzas, keeping their violence away from Florence. He had visited secretly, not wishing to be seen in the streets, despite no one being aware of who he was or what his skills were. A stranger’s face was always noticed in these small towns and suspicion hung in the air, ready to turn, as quickly as the spin of a coin, into a brutal assault in case such a stranger had been brought in as an assassin. Avoiding the narrow streets he went to the Ceppo hospital, where he offered his skills in herbal medicine to those who suffered wounds and other ailments. He had been taught how to staunch cuts that went to the bone and suture the wounds and then to apply the balms and herbs, the knowledge passed down to him by his mother, and her mother before her. After a month he disappeared, and no one knew where.

  Undetected, he had gone beneath the hospital into the labyrinth that led below the city walls and several hundred yards later emerged in a side alley, so narrow that a loaded donkey could not pass through it. No sound of beaten metal came from behind the studded door that hid the small foundry where the blade maker produced his pistolesi – the daggers so favoured by assassins. Instead there was the sound of files and rubbing stones, grinding away at the blades. It was a slow, laborious task that required concentration to shape the bevelled centre of the knife and painstakingly smooth away its edges. He slept in the foundry, unwilling to leave until the knife he wanted was ready. It had been cut from a piece of steel and measured for its balance, its double-edged blade taking weeks to shape, its bevelled edges crafted and ground by the master’s apprentice – then taken to the charcoal fire that glowed with deep red heat and thrust into Satan’s domain to be tested by his heat. He never forgot the sight as the steel was prodded gently to harden: a process that demanded not only skill but years of experience. The charcoal had not to be too hot or it would ruin the steel, and if the blade became too yellow or blue then it remained too soft. Only when it turned a rich crimson
along its whole length did the master have his assistant quench it in a vat of olive oil. It was the oil that sealed its strength. The cool blade was cleaned, slowly rubbed clean of the fire’s deposits by a grinding stone, coarse at first and then finer. Once that was done it was placed on a griddle above a lesser-heated fire, allowing the embers to heat the metal gradually until it turned the colour of mountain honey. It was this that tempered the blade into hardened steel. Yet again it was quenched and once more ground and burnished until the metal gleamed.

  The chestnut grip was carved to shape and bored end to end, then held in a vice and when the dagger’s narrow tang was heated it was pushed through the small crossguard and into the wood forming a perfect fit. A young child, whose small fingers could bind thin strips of cured leather, wound and glued the grip. The dagger’s blade was no more than the length of a man’s palm from wrist to fingertip. It was an object of beauty to the Visconti’s assassin – a blade so finely honed it could sting through the slender gaps of the best armour, and its bevelled edges so sharp it could slash a man’s throat so that he did not know it until he choked on his own blood.

  Unlike those who contracted him, especially the cruel Italian lord to whom he was bound by blood, he took no delight in the killing of a victim, felt no visceral thrill in making the final cut. Sending a soul to meet its judgement was an act that transcended the brutality of torture. Not for him the skills of tearing flesh and extending suffering; his pleasure came from the perfection of the kill and the deception of making the victim believe that the man sent to kill him was an ally. Suffering could be achieved in different ways. Take that which a man loves and then take the man himself once he knows he has lost it.

  This killer was not known by face, except to the one corrupt lord. Throughout the Italian city-states a whisper sent out for his talent would, like a bee gathering pollen from flower to flower before returning to its hive, gain momentum and eventually reach him. He had never failed to kill his victim, and usually within plain sight of others. It was his ability to kill quickly and often with flair, and then to disappear like a phantom, that enhanced his legend. There was no name attached to him, no one place of residence. It was suspected that he lived in comfort, given the rumours that he only killed those of importance: merchant, politician or soldier – anyone whose influence had begun to encroach on another’s power. That there could never be any link to those who hired him and the death of their adversary meant they had a golden cage of security – better than any Peruzzi or Bardi bank.

  His appearance could change; his short hair meant his head could easily be covered by black cloth pulled tightly over his scalp. He wore no adornment or material that might warn his victim. He was a lithe man, slender as an acrobat, his practised muscles stretched across a torso that carried no fat, no sign of indolence or indulgence in fine sweet foods. When contracted to follow and slay a quarry he wore no boots, leaving his feet bare for purchase on marble floor or dirt street. He bound his legs and wrapped his torso in finely woven black cloth, with no leather belt to creak when he moved, rather a thin, corded rope to hold the material around him. He had learnt to control his respiration so that his breath would not plume in the chilled winter shadows, and he would not be heard to inhale as he lunged, or exhale as he struck.

  Like a dancer he could turn on heel or toe.

  One cut.

  Then dance away.

  Now, he was already in place. His orders were simple. Infiltrate Blackstone’s men, lie in wait, become unseen, and when the time was right inflict great pain and suffering on the Englishman. Make him scream in agony so that his pain ripped out his heart and he died a slow death.

  18

  Fra Stefano Caprini led the way along mist-hidden tracks that made the going slow over the next few days. Rivulets slithered down the rock faces as if the stone that protruded from the forest’s banks wept from being held by ancient roots that clawed them back to the earth.

  Breath feathered the air as the horses made their way steadily at the walk, nose to tail. Saddle-creak and jingling bridles were the only sounds that broke the silence as they clumped along the dirt pathway. Over the centuries the Via Francigena had been scraped from the countryside and in most places allowed only two men to walk abreast, which meant that riders could travel only in single file. Despite the closeness of the man in front and the dripping wet from the overhanging trees, Blackstone’s men stayed alert during these passages through narrow confines. Saddlebags scraped the embankments; riders bent low over their pommels to avoid low-hanging branches. None voiced his tiredness or irritation at being hemmed in by the landscape. As they cleared a bend the valley mist was swept away, as if by the hand of God, and sucked further into the deep valleys. Nine hours after daylight had pierced its way through the hills they heard a solitary church bell’s desolate tolling.

  Across the saddle of land was a bell-tower and some stone buildings, big enough to house a dozen or more monks. A wisp of smoke went up and then bent as the air took it in the mist’s wake.

  ‘Little more than a monastery cell,’ Caprini said, turning in the saddle to Blackstone, who nudged his belligerent horse alongside his guide. It snuffled and champed the bit, yanking its head. Blackstone gave a firm tug of the rein to settle it.

  ‘Perhaps a dozen monks who work the fields and tend the livestock, so we will sleep with the horses in the stable. Food for us and the last of the winter silage for the horses,’ the Tau knight continued, pointing to the low wooden thatched building on the other side of the tower. ‘This is our final resting place before we climb into the foothills and seek out our guides through the pass.’

  ‘You know this place?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I have not been here for ten years. It’s grown. It used to be little more than a hermitage.’

  Blackstone studied the lie of the land. The small plateau had been divided into sections. Low stone walls had been laid to protect their small potager. A meagre diet for a gruelling life. A goat was tethered; that would be for milk, not meat. It flicked its ears as a donkey brayed defiance. Probably at being kept in such miserable company as that offered by the hermit monks, Blackstone thought. The monks would grind what flour they could buy or trade and bake rough-crusted bread, but no such tantalizing smells accompanied the wisp of smoke.

  This was the third similar refuge they had stayed in over the past nine days. They had made steady time, though too slow for Blackstone’s liking, since bidding farewell to Killbere and the men south of Aulla. No threat had been made against them, no challenge offered as the company of men skirted village and town.

  ‘When you reach Bordeaux,’ Blackstone had told Killbere, ‘go north, find the causeway to Saint-Clair-de-la-Beaumont; it will still be held by Jean de Grailly’s troops. There’s a church nearby and a monk there by the name of Brother Clement. I gave him my silver when we took Saint-Clair.’

  Killbere’s eyes widened. Blackstone raised a hand to stop his friend’s inquisition. ‘I promised Our Lord Jesus that day if he carried me safely ashore off that barrel of a cog then I would give over my plunder.’

  Killbere scratched his beard. ‘You are a man of conflicting habits, Thomas, but you’re a man of your word, for which I and no doubt the Lord are grateful. And now I understand why you would rather have the ground beneath your feet than a rolling deck.’

  Killbere considered what was being asked of him. Normandy was a dangerous place, more so since King John had been defeated and taken prisoner at Poitiers. Thousands of routiers were raping and burning across France. Knights lost their demesnes and Norman strongholds changed hands through siege or corruption. And the King’s son was trying to keep Paris out of the clutches of the avaricious Charles of Navarre, who still had designs on the French Crown. The whole place was an angry hornet’s nest.

  ‘And if de Grailly has forsaken the place?’

  ‘His men will hold it. It’s too vital to lose.’

  Killbere was agitated. ‘I don’t trust monks at
the best of times. Halfwits, illegitimate cast-offs and self-serving, lying thieves who would strip a corpse in the name of the Almighty. God forbid they should seek a legitimate trade in the world.’ He held a finger to the side of his nose and blew the snot free. ‘Why not go further into Normandy and use those at Chaulion? It was your citadel and you gave the monks there more than a few pots of silver.’

  ‘No. The Prince took my towns from me. His men would send word if you approach. Go to Brother Clement. See if he has spent my gift wisely; if he has then use him to find a safe route for you and the men. He’ll be trustworthy and in my debt.’

  Killbere had gazed down from the hills towards Genoa. There was sanctuary within sight at the Romanesque churches of Commenda di San Giovanni di Prè, a place that had protected pilgrims and fighting men since the time of the Crusades.

  ‘You’ll not reconsider? There’s a straw mattress and hot food down there. God’s blood, Thomas, a damned boat ride is better than a saddle-sore arse even if you retch it over the side. You might not get through those mountains. Take the boat with us.’

  Blackstone turned his horse. ‘Gilbert, I would rather face Satan and his devils with one arm tied behind my back than surrender to his kindred spirits lurking beneath those waves. Get to Calais. Await my orders.’

  There was no more to be said and now, days later, hungry, wet and tired, Blackstone eased himself from the saddle and listened to the Tau knight’s caution.

  ‘This is a route seldom used, Sir Thomas. These monks prefer solitude and prayer. Such a community may not always express kindness to fighting men.’

  Blackstone knew monks could be belligerent bastards if they were not there to serve pilgrims and receive payment for it. ‘We pay our way, Stefano. I’m not here for conversation or prayer.’