“How long can we stay submerged?” asked de la Pole scarcely able to believe he was at the bottom of the river.
“For as long as we like, Thomas has discovered a way to make the air we breathe,” said Prometheus.
“By using a powder made from dried piss,” added Quintana.
“Allow me to demonstrate My Lord,” said Thomas eagerly. He clambered over the rowing benches to the cabinet of hot stones, opened the keg he’d left behind earlier and scattered several large handfuls of the Chinese salt onto the hot iron pan. In the gloom de la Pole could see the pile of coarse grains begin to smoke.
“Heating Chinese salt releases the quintessence of air,” Thomas said proudly except this time the saltpetre released a lot more than air. For a moment the mineral behaved as it had in the glass jars, quietly smouldering and releasing the precious aether that sustained life, but then there was a blinding flash and The Hippocamp began to fill with dense choking smoke. Seconds later the boat’s pitch and resin soaked planks caught fire.
The previous serene calm inside The Hippocamp was instantly replaced by a pandemonium of panic as the five men tried to beat out the flames but it was too late. The slender pinewood strakes, already labouring under the unnatural stresses of being bent around The Hippocamp’s curved ribs, suddenly burst apart with a loud crack. The force of the break ruptured the boat’s leather skin and water began to pour through the hole. The flood extinguished the flames but did nothing to lessen the peril facing the men trapped inside the doomed vessel.
“In the name of God Almighty get us back to the surface before we all drown!” roared de la Pole.
“Thomas, release the weights, the rest of you, help me try and plug the breach,” barked Quintana, who was ripping off his shirt and stuffing it into the hole in the planking. The others scrambled to help him whilst Thomas found the mallet to knock out the pegs holding the weights to the keel. The bottom of the boat was already awash and as Thomas felt for the first peg, the others trod on his hands. After a few heart stopping seconds he found the peg and struck it as hard as he could but the muddy water in the bottom of the boat was a foot deep and it cushioned each blow.
The deluge of water and the shouting of his companions didn’t help but after three waterlogged strikes Thomas managed to knock out the peg that held the stern weight. Instantly the rear of the boat began to rise sending all the men tumbling into the bow. As the boat slowly stood on its nose, the cabinet in the stern burst open, the hot stones fell into the flooded keel with hiss and the resulting steam extinguished the lantern. Now Thomas had to search for the peg holding the bow weight in total darkness
It took a dozen attempts but at last the peg gave way and the boat was free of its anchors. The men felt the vessel rise and when they were sure they’d broached the surface Bos wrenched the entrance hatch open. A shaft of sunlight showed they had indeed returned from the depths but the boat was still filling rapidly with water. Bos climbed out and hauled de la Pole through the hatch as if he were a spent fish. Prometheus followed but before Quintana and Thomas could escape, the water pouring through the shattered planks finally claimed The Hippocamp for Poseidon.
The boat began to return, bow first, to the bottom of the Moselle. Water now poured through the open hatch as well has the punctured hull, which hastened the stricken vessel’s descent into the deep. Try as they might, Thomas and Quintana couldn’t clamber their way to the hatch and they were forced to retreat to a pocket of air trapped in the stern. For a moment they were safe but the water kept on rising. They had barely a minute before they drowned.
“Can you swim?” gasped Quintana, Thomas nodded. “Good, take a deep breath and follow me!”
Both men closed their eyes, filled their lungs with air and dived beneath the oily brown water. Blind, chilled to the marrow and half drowned the two men had to feel their way, hand-over-hand, to the spot where they thought the opening to the entrance hatch would be but all they found were solid wood planks. Thomas tried to fight his growing sense of desperation, he felt as if his lungs were on fire, his head swam with dizziness and he knew that if he lost consciousness he’d die but the lack of air only served to increase his sense of panic and disorientation.
In the final moment before death Thomas could feel the hands of river demons clawing at him but he felt no fear and he gratefully surrendered to the inevitable. He let his body go limp, so the ghostly nixe could carry him to Hell, but instead of a blast of red hot brimstone he felt the cold rush of fresh air on his face. Without thinking he opened his mouth to suck in air only for his body to be seized by paroxysms of coughing and retching as his stomach and lungs tried to eject several pints of river water at the same time. Eventually the spasm passed and he realised he was lying on grass. Hardly daring to hope he was in Elysium rather than Tartarus, he opened his eyes and saw blue skies.
“He lives,” said Quintana.
“Then he has you to thank for his life Portugee,” said Bos.
“What happened? I thought it was all over for me,” Thomas croaked.
“Quintana got you out but perhaps it would have been better if we’d all drowned,” said Prometheus grimly. Thomas raised himself onto one elbow and saw that he and his companions were surrounded by the men of the Black Band and each of de la Pole’s cutthroats was holding a sword or a long wooden quarterstaff. The White Rose, who was looking less like a king and more like a drowned daisy, stood flanked by his men and his face was the same colour as his mulberry banner.
“Assassins! I see it all now. You were sent to wreck my schemes and murder your rightful king, who paid you? Was it Henry? Tell me and I’ll make your death swift but hold your tongue and you’ll spend weeks in agony before I grant you the mercy of the grave,” he shrieked.
“I’m no assassin, it was sabotage! Someone changed my keg of saltpetre for one of gunpowder and in the darkness I didn’t notice. Whoever did that destroyed your ship not I,” spluttered Thomas.
“Silence! I know you and your fellow warlocks have bewitched me but I’ll make sure you miserable traitors suffer the fate of all those who make a pact with Satan,” De la Pole raged. Thomas and Quintana, lying half-drowned on the grass, could say nothing in their own defence but Prometheus and Bos leapt to their feet, balled their huge fists and prepared to fight.
“We’re not witches, we’re baptised Christians who live to serve The Lord of Light not the King of Darkness,” cried Prometheus.
“And we ’ll prove our innocence before God in a trial by combat,” growled Bos forgetting that he and his companions were unarmed whilst de la Pole’s men carried long halberds with lethal blades.
“Do you think me a fool? With my own eyes, I saw the sorcerer Devilstone raise the demon Abrasax from The Pit!” De la Pole bellowed and he ordered the men of the Black Band to arrest the warlocks.
Though de la Pole’s men were hampered by their master’s order to take the wizards alive, there was never any doubt about the outcome of the fight. Bos and Prometheus managed to bloody the noses and black the eyes of many of their former comrades but in the end the Black band’s superior numbers and stout ash staves carried the day. Bos and Prometheus were clubbed into insensibility whilst Thomas and Quintana were too weak to put up anything but a token resistance.
“Take them to the dungeons at the pont des Morts and summon the Cathedral Chapter. The Bishop of St Etienne shall decide these heretics’ fate but first we shall give them a taste of the everlasting pain that awaits him in Hell,” ordered de la Pole but Thomas and the others weren’t listening. The storm of vicious blows unleashed upon the prisoners’ heads had knocked them all utterly senseless.
12
THE PONT DES MORTS
Thomas was woken by a strange tickling sensation. Painfully, he opened his eyes and saw a large black rat licking the dried blood that encrusted his temple. Choking back his feelings of revulsion, he lay motionless and tried to decide if the verminous creature was real or a nightmare. The rat carried on lapping at th
e crusted gore oblivious to his gaze. Finally Thomas could bear it no longer, he gave a cry of disgust and lashed out at the hateful animal. The blow catapulted the rat into the shadows and with a squeak of annoyance it scuttled away through a crack in the wall.
Nursing his ringing head, and thanking God that his limbs had not been chained to the wall, Thomas sat up and tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was imprisoned in a small stone vault with a curved roof and an iron grill for a door. The cell was roughly eight feet long by six feet wide but it wasn’t high enough to allow a grown man to stand. There was nothing inside, except a thin carpet of reeking straw, and though it was much smaller than the cell he’d shared in The Fleet, the damp air and foetid stench were identical. Slowly and painfully he crawled to the grating at the front of the cell and peered into the gloom. It was only now that he realised this dungeon wasn’t just a place of incarceration, it was also a place of unimaginable suffering.
In the flickering light of the room’s torches, Thomas could see several terrifying tools of the witch-finder’s trade. To the left was a rack, encrusted with the dried blood and body fluids of its victims, as well as a brazier used to heat the ‘Spanish spiders’ that tore nipples from women’s breasts and shredded men’s privy parts. To the right was a wooden chair studded with rows of short spikes and behind this throne of pain was an enormous wooden drum, large enough for two men to stand inside. The drum was attached to a wooden boom and it took a while for Thomas to realise that he wasn’t looking at a torture device but a crane. What this machine was meant to lift he couldn’t tell because the chain hanging from the crane’s boom disappeared through an iron grating in the floor.
If the function of the crane remained a mystery the purpose of the two smaller winches in the centre of the room was all too clear. These windlasses, together with their cats’ cradle of ropes and pulleys, were the strappado and during his travels Thomas had been told how the Holy Inquisition used this device to suspend heretics in mid-air in a variety of excruciating positions. The gradual dislocation of the victim’s limbs was usually enough to secure a full confession but this version of the strappado had an unusual refinement. A blunt wooden pyramid, about eighteen inches high at its point, had been fixed to an oak frame placed between the two winches. Together the pyramid and frame stood about the height of a man’s shoulder and Thomas noticed that both were stained black with blood.
Shuddering at the sight, Thomas crawled away from the door. The twisted fiends who’d built this dungeon must have known that placing the instruments of pain in full view of their victims would be enough to persuade many prisoners to talk but Thomas was determined not to lapse into the agony of despair. Instead, he forced himself to concentrate on how he could survive the nightmare to come but his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a lock being unfastened.
On the far side of the chamber a heavy oak door opened and a short but powerfully built brute of a man entered. His head and chin were completely hairless and he wore nothing but grimy breeches, a sleeveless leather jerkin and wooden sabots. He was followed by a second turnkey who had the identical build and grubby clothes of his colleague but in contrast to the first gaoler this man had long, greasy hair and a huge black beard matted with filth and half chewed food. In desperation Thomas lay face down in the straw and pretended to be unconscious.
“Have your senses returned, you cursed English warlock?” said the bald gaoler staring at Thomas’ prostrate form. When the prisoner remained motionless, the hairy gaoler handed his bald colleague a short pike, taken from a rack on the chamber’s wall and, with a malevolence born of pure evil, the bald gaoler thrust the blade through the cell door’s bars. Though blunt and rusted, the spear’s point easily sliced through the flesh of Thomas shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain.
“So you’re alive, that’s good ‘cos we’ve something very special for you, something that makes cocksucking servants of Satan scream a lot louder than a little tickle from my old pig sticker,” said the bald gaoler, patting his pike lovingly. Thomas continued to groan and nurse the deep gash in his upper arm, whereupon the hairy gaoler spat into the straw in disgust.
“Be silent, you mewl like a beggar bitch about to whelp yet you have nothing to moan about. His Grace the bishop is coming to listen to your sins in person and the old lecher usually only stirs himself when we have a plump young wench to put to the question. So think yourself honoured that a prince of the church wishes to hear you confess,” said the hirsute torturer.
“I’ll confess nothing except that it’s men’s nature to seek knowledge. Only the dull and slow witted mistake wisdom for witchcraft and all I’ve ever been is a student of the Natural Philosophies,” growled Thomas.
“Bravely spoken but I’ve heard many brave speeches in here. Now, aren’t you interested in how we persuade foul witches to reveal their dastardly pacts with The Devil?” said the bald gaoler.
“Be warned, those who persecute the righteous shall themselves suffer the most bestial cruelties and I will gladly follow in the footsteps of Socrates and Hypatia who suffered martyrdom in the cause of Truth,” Thomas declared defiantly.
“Say what you like, words make no difference, you’ll vomit up all your secrets once we start to play with our favourite toy,” said the hairy gaoler and the two brutes walked to the strappado in the centre of the torture chamber. Like sailors preparing their vessel for sea, the gaolers began to make adjustments to the device’s ropes and pulleys and when they were satisfied they carefully explained each item’s function to their victim.
“We tie your arms and legs to these ropes, haul you up then lower your naked backside slowly onto this pyramid. ‘Ere, you’re not a sodomite are you? We don’t use this on sodomites ‘cos they like something big and hard shoved up their arses!” cried the bald gaoler and he roared with laughter.
“They call it the Judas Cradle but it should be named Eve’s Punishment ‘cos they scream like a whore giving birth to her first bastard,” added the hairy gaoler. Once again the two men howled with delight but their mirth was interrupted by a voice from outside summoning them to other duties. Reluctantly, the gaolers abandoned their baiting of Thomas and went to do their master’s bidding.
“Think on what awaits you when we return, you English bastard, but don’t worry, we’ll be back soon and we’ll make sure you don’t die too quickly, the bishop likes his fun,” sneered the bald gaoler and the two turnkeys left the dungeon leaving their prisoner alone with the Judas Cradle. Thomas felt the cold sweat of fear run down his back as he wondered how long a man could endure such agony.
The terrifying vision of being slowly spitted like a suckling pig plagued Thomas’ thoughts until the gaolers returned an hour later and this time they were not alone. The turnkeys escorted a dozen clerics from the Cathedral Chapter into the torture chamber, led by Jean de Lorraine Bishop of Metz and the White Rose Richard de la Pole.
All the inquisitors, including de la Pole, were dressed in simple monks’ habits of black wool, with the hoods pulled over their heads to obscure their faces. Like a snake stalking its prey, the file of holy men slithered into the chamber and coiled itself around the Judas Cradle. As the monks formed their sinister circle, they chanted psalms to protect themselves from evil but once they were in position the singing abruptly ceased. For several minutes the monks stood motionless, letting their silent prayers sow the seeds of fear in their victim’s soul. Eventually, the fattest of the monks, whom Thomas assumed to be the bishop, began to speak.
“In the year of Our Lord 1484, the Holy Father Innocent VIII issued the bull Summis Desiderantes Affectibus, which commanded all Christians to root out the foul practice of witchcraft and correct, imprison, punish and chastise such persons,” said the bishop solemnly. Thomas, sitting in his cell, listened to the bishop repeat the papal declaration of war on witches and snorted with contempt.
“You would obey a pope who thought nothing of committing the sin of simony and who fathered a dozen bastard c
hildren?” Thomas declared. For a moment the bishop was so angry at his prisoner’s impudence he could only stare at Thomas with cold, merciless eyes but he soon found his tongue and he began to list the charges that had been levied against the English wizard.
“So, Thomas Devilstone, you see fit to add slander and sacrilege to the list of your many and varied sins. Don’t think that we in Metz have forgotten how you and your master Agrippa once bewitched a similar court of enquiry to secure the release of another of your coven yet even this is not the worst of your crimes. Today you must answer the charges that you bewitched a prince of the royal blood and so, by means of necromancy, forced him to construct a diabolical boat to travel under the water. Moreover, once you’d built such a vessel, you cast more spells that forced the royal personage of Richard de la Pole to enter so you could assassinate him by means of gunpowder,” said the bishop.
“And how would blowing myself to smithereens serve Satan?” Thomas said sarcastically.
“The Devil protects his own, however God saw fit to save his servant Richard and deliver his assassin into our hands instead. It’s clear to us you have returned to Metz to conquer this city for Satan but we may yet be merciful. Confess your sins, name the others who conspired with you and you shall all be strangled before your bodies are burned. Yet if you keep silent, you shall suffer all the torments that can be applied to frail human flesh. How do you answer witch?” said the bishop
“I answer by accusing you, John of Lorraine, of being nothing but a debauched French catspaw who’s squandered the wealth of his benefices on whores and high living! Now you must sell your soul to settle your debts but a mere bishop doesn’t frighten me. I’ve been tried by a cardinal and he was twice the whore-mongering poltroon you are,” said Thomas. Beneath his hood the bishop was speechless with rage so Richard de la Pole took up the cudgel of justice.
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