Quintana drove his knee into the groin of the nearest guard and the man fell to his knees, clutching his crushed manhood and howling in pain. Bos, though his wrists were bound, managed to smash his forehead into another guard’s face splintering the man’s nose. Thomas twisted himself free of his half tied bonds and began pummelling his captor into insensibility whilst Prometheus, the rage of battle upon him, picked up one of the smaller guards, who still weighed as much as a full barrel of ale, and threw him at two more of his opponents. The three guards tumbled over in a tangled mass of arms and legs and in doing so they knocked over one of the braziers full of glowing coals.
The contents of the brazier tumbled over the sprawling guards scorching their flesh. The stricken men howled in pain and they began brushing the burning coals off their skin but in doing so the red-hot embers fell against the tent’s walls and the cloth began to smoulder. A heartbeat later, the tent burst into flame. Marie and Helene screamed and ran for their lives whilst de la Pole’s men tried to beat out the flames with their bare hands. Ignoring the fire, Thomas and the others retrieved the daggers that had been taken from them and fell upon their enemies from behind.
Their blades flashed in the orange glow of the strengthening flames, de la Pole’s men screamed as their throats were slit and were dead before they knew what was happening. The White Rose was now alone but not defeated and he launched himself at his foes, wielding his sword with the skill of a fencing master. The huge English blade was designed to be used from the saddle, to crush heads and lop the limbs off humble footsoldiers, and it was more than a match for his opponents’ daggers.
Even though the White Rose was outnumbered, the reach of his blade easily kept the assassins at bay. Slowly, the fire and the fury of de la Pole’s onslaught forced Thomas and the others to retreat towards the tent’s entrance, until a great blanket of burning silk detached itself from the tent’s roof and fell, like a fiery curtain, between the foes. Prometheus quickly cut away the smouldering cloth but de la Pole had gone, he’d slashed open the back of the tent and slipped away.
“It’s over, our phoenix has flown and so must we,” said the Nubian bitterly.
“Our only hope is to set fire to as many tents as we can and in the confusion we may also get away,” said Quintana. Hurriedly, the Portugee snatched up a fallen sword and tore a strip of cloth from the tent. Tying the rag around the sword’s point he plunged the makeshift torch into the flames until it caught fire. The others did likewise and were about to run outside when they saw Thomas hesitate.
“Go on, I’ll join you later, The Munich Handbook might be somewhere in this tent and this may be my only chance to get it back. I’ll meet you at the village of San Genesio, by the north western gate into the deer park, and if I’m not there by daybreak I’m dead,” he cried and he began to hack away the burning guy ropes and tent poles that blocked the corridor to de la Pole’s private quarters. There was no time to argue, so the others ran from the doomed pavilion and began thrusting their firebrands into the tents surrounding the parade ground.
The smaller tent where the White Rose had entertained Marie and Helene was also full of smoke but Thomas could see a bed surrounded by crumpled clothes in one corner and a wooden strongbox in another. Thanks to the sudden of his flight from the tent, de la Pole had left the key to the chest on a chain fastened to his discarded breeches so Thomas quickly unlocked the box, flung open the lid and began to search through the contents. He tossed embroidered doublets, Spanish novels and fine woollen hose onto the floor but there was no sign of his lost grimoire. He cursed angrily to himself, he could hardly believe that de la Pole had destroyed the precious book, or left it behind, yet there seemed to be no other place in the tent to keep anything of value.
The smoke and smell of burning was becoming unbearable and Thomas could hear the sound of drums summoning the Black Band from their slumbers to fight the spreading fire. He stood up and took a last look at the ornately carved chest. At the last moment, inspiration struck him. He dropped to his knees and began to explore every inch of the carved wood with excited fingertips. A minute later, he found the secret catch hidden in the centre of an exquisitely chiselled rose. He pressed it and a small drawer in the base of the chest popped open.
Inside the hidden drawer was the familiar oilcloth wallet. Thomas snatched it up, unwrapped it and gazed upon his lost copy of The Munich Handbook. De la Pole had had the book rebound but a quick inspection of the pages revealed da Vinci’s priceless drawings and notes were still intact. Thomas was overjoyed to have recovered the precious volume but before he could examine it further a loud crash, indicating the centre tent behind him had collapsed, spurred him into action. He rewrapped the book, stuffed it into his shirt and slashed his way through the tent’s cloth walls.
A moment later he’d crawled through the torn fabric and was breathing fresh air. Once outside, he was just a few feet from the inner ring of wagons and without a second thought he dived under the nearest cart. The ground was wet and strewn with refuse but screened by the cartwheels He could now travel unseen between to any point in the wagon fort’s citadel. Using his hands and knees to slither through the mud and garbage he began to crawl away from the burning tent. His only thought was to find a patch of darkness where he could cross to the outer ring of wagons but he hadn’t gone far when he saw the shivering figures of Marie and Helene huddled beneath the cart ahead of him.
“Over here, it’s me,” Thomas hissed. The girls turned and looked at him miserably. Freezing cold and covered in smuts they looked less like harem girls and more like orphans of the storm.
“What’s happening, have we done something wrong?” Helene asked.
“No, it’s my friends and I who’ve made a complete bollocks of everything. We’ve all sworn to kill the man who calls himself the White Rose but now he’s vowed to kill us,” said Thomas grimly and he quickly explained that their seraglio had been merely a ruse to get close to their target.
“You bastard, you might’ve told us, we’re not in the habit of assisting murderers!” Marie said angrily.
“You have my unending apologies and if we get out of here I’ll make it up to you but for now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more pressing matters to which I must attend,” said Thomas curtly and he was about to crawl away when Helene grabbed his sleeve.
“You’re not going to leave us here are you? If they catch us they’ll hang us as surely as they’ll hang you!” she wailed. Thomas swore under his breath. It would be hard enough for one person to escape, let alone three, but he couldn’t leave the girls to the tender mercies of de la Pole’s torturers.
“Of course I’m not leaving you but we’ll need to change, three Turks running around a French camp will stick out like a beard on a nun,” whispered Thomas and he looked around for somewhere where they could steal some new clothes.
They were in luck, the tent a few feet from their hiding place was intact and every man in the Black Band was now fully occupied with fighting the fire. There was a chance the tent was still occupied by some lazy drunkard or sleeping kampfrau so Thomas crept forward cautiously, drew his sword as quietly as he could and carefully slit open the canvas. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the tent was empty and there was a pile of ebony coloured clothing heaped in one corner. He signalled for the girls to join him and once inside they all dressed in the livery of their enemy. In the darkness, they would easily pass for three of de la Pole’s men and so they ventured into the open.
Again fortune was with them, the fire was now threatening the camp’s powder store so every available man was busy chopping down tents to create a fire break or hurrying to fetch water. The light from the inferno illuminated a stream of men with buckets running towards the Repentina gate a hundred yards from the camp and Thomas guessed they were heading for the little river Naviglio, which lay just outside the deer park’s walls. As he waited for a suitable moment to join the exodus of watercarriers leaving the camp, Marie tugged on Thomas�
� sleeve and pointed to two leather buckets and a small barrel lying under a cart. The pails were full of holes and the keg missing a stave but that didn’t matter. Thomas grinned, snatched up the keg for himself and gave the buckets to the girls.
Surrounded by hundreds of other people carrying buckets, barrels and anything else that would hold water, no one paid the fugitives the slightest attention and the throng carried them out of the camp and through the Repentina gate like three twigs being swept over a weir. Even at the riverbank they had no difficulty in slipping away into the darkness and they were soon running through the empty fields and pastures that lay beyond the deer park. Breathless with the relief and elation of escape Thomas led Marie and Helene to the village of San Genesio where he’d agreed to meet the others.
19
THE GALLOWS
To Thomas’ great relief, Prometheus was already waiting for them whilst Bos and Quintana arrived a short time afterwards. Judging by the fact they were all wearing the same sombre clothing as himself, they too had escaped from the camp disguised as members of the Black Band.
“Was it worth risking your neck for that cursed grimoire?” Bos asked when they’d finished congratulating themselves on outwitting de la Pole without the aid of the deceitful Nagel. At the mention of the missing spell-book, Bos, Prometheus and Quintana stared accusingly at Thomas and their unsympathetic expressions quickly convinced him that it might be better to keep quiet about recovering The Munich Handbook, at least for the time being.
“It wasn’t there,” he lied and the others accepted Thomas’ fiction with knowing nods of their heads before turning their attention to more pressing matters.
“We can’t stay here, de la Pole will soon have every Frenchman who can walk or ride scouring the countryside for us, especially as we’ve just added sabotage, arson and attempted regicide to our list of crimes,” said Quintana brushing the singed hairs from his beard.
“But we can’t leave, the White Rose and his snake-tongued slave Nagel must die if our honour is to be restored,” Prometheus replied sternly but the Portugee shook his head.
“I think our careers as assassins are over because after tonight it’ll take an army to get within a mile of Richard de la Pole, or do my eyes deceive me?” Quintana said and he waved his hand towards the horizon. In the faint glow of the burning camp, the four men could see their dreams of winning the gratitude of an English king, either Tudor or Yorkist, disappearing in the clouds of smoke and flame.
“I fear the Portugee has a point, we’ve failed and there’s nothing more to be done,” said Bos and after some thought Prometheus reluctantly conceded that the affair was ended. Even Thomas had to admit that wherever their destiny lay, it could no longer be at Pavia.
“Perhaps you’re right but what shall we do now? If the entire French army is after our blood perhaps we’d be safest in imperial territory,” he suggested.
“By the blessed tits of the Holy Virgin, that’s what I’ve been saying all along!” Quintana cried.
As Lodi was the nearest city still loyal to the emperor, Thomas thought they should journey there as quickly as possible. Prometheus agreed but added that after Lodi they should continue further east, to Hungary, where they’d be even safer from the intrigues of French kings or English rebels and they could atone for their sins by slaughtering infidel Turks. Bos agreed that any of the Christian princes fighting the Ottoman Turks would welcome their talents but Quintana raised a note of caution. He reminded the others that, wherever they decided to go, they’d need money to get there and the profits from their whoring lay buried beneath their tent in the camp at Mirabello.
“But Mirabello is surrounded by the French army!” Bos protested, Thomas and Prometheus also thought trying to reach their tent would be tantamount to suicide but the Portugee was adamant.
“It would be suicide to abandon so much gold, have you forgotten that we earned a tidy sum from our labours?” Quintana said, whereupon Marie and Helene cried out in indignation.
“You mean our labours, and if you plan to abandon us like bastard children you’ve got another think coming,” they said angrily and they added their voices to the heated debate. None of them wanted to abandon their hidden treasure but the gates into the deer park would not be opened until dawn and by then every French picket, scout and sentry would be on the lookout for spies and saboteurs.
In the end, Thomas’ argument, that they could return to Mirabello once the tide of war had receded, prevailed and despite Quintana’s continued grumbling about the evils of poverty the men agreed to set off for Lodi at once. The two women however had different ideas, they were still wearing the earrings, bangles and other jewellery that the company had bought to adorn their houris’ costumes and if they sold just one of these baubles they’d have enough money to return to Marseilles.
As the girls had no desire to remain in Lombardy they offered their erstwhile bawds a bargain, if they could keep the wealth they wore, they’d happily forfeit their share of the buried profits. The men, realising they would have the best of the arrangement, readily agreed and as their roads now took them in opposite directions, they said their goodbyes. Marie and Helene left on good terms, and wished their former employers well, but what had become of Magda and Ulla, no one could say.
Lodi stood at the eastern end of a triangle formed by Milan twenty miles to the north and Pavia twenty miles to the south. With Milan in French hands, and the imperial garrison at Pavia besieged by Francis’ army, Lodi was the largest city in Lombardy still loyal to Charles V’s Holy Roman Empire and it’s walls were defended by 15,000 imperial mercenaries.
These landsknechts included the rump of the failed invasion force led by the French rebel the Duke of Bourbon and the Flemish prince the Count of Lannoy. Bourbon had taken much of the blame for the debacle at Marseilles so Lannoy had remained Imperial Viceroy of Naples and Commander in Chief of the Holy Roman Emperor’s Italian armies but his men were demoralised and desertions were rife. Realising the fate of Italy could be decided at Pavia the emperor had promised to send reinforcements to Lannoy as soon as possible and the core of this new army would be 12,000 landsknechts under the command of the celebrated mercenary colonel Georg von Frundsberg.
Added to Frundsberg’s Germans would be fresh contingents raised from the emperor’s Spanish and Italian territories so, in a few weeks, Lannoy would be able to lead an army of more than 30,000 men in a lightning campaign to relieve the 10,000 imperials trapped in Pavia and drive the French back over the Alps. As disease and desertion had also reduced the French army’s strength to less than 25,000 men, an imperial victory would be all but certain, provided Pavia’s garrison could hold out until Frundsberg arrived.
On the first day of December, Lannoy received news that Frundsberg had left his camp in Bavaria and was making a forced march over the Brenner pass. Later that day, whilst Lannoy’s chaplain said Mass for the beginning of Advent, the imperial marshal prayed that the old campaigner his soldiers called Father of Landsknechts would survive making such a perilous trip in the depths of winter.
Whilst Lannoy waited patiently for Frundsberg, Thomas and his companions spent a miserable week travelling to Lodi. The sun, when it did bother to shine, was as weak as a faithless husband’s excuses whilst the rain lashed them longer and harder than any sergeant’s cane. The worst of the storms broke whilst the men were trudging wearily over the flat plain to the south of Lodi. This squall was so violent the men were forced to shelter in a goatherd’s hut even though they were barely a mile from the city’s gates. Exhausted by their trip, the men had fallen onto the heap of mouldering straw they’d found inside and were soon fast asleep.
How long they’d slept they didn’t know but they were roused by strange sounds coming from outside the shack. Fleeting shadows interrupted the sunlight streaming through the gaps in the wooden planking and the men inside heard the whispered sounds of a guttural language that sounded like German. As Thomas and the others sat up and felt for their
swords, the hovel’s flimsy door crashed open to reveal a huge soldier dressed in the colourful slashed doublet and striped hose of an imperial landsknecht. He was holding an arquebus with a smouldering match in its serpent and Thomas had no doubt the gun was loaded with small, sharp pebbles that would be lethal if fired into this confined space.
“Don’t shoot we’re simple travellers on our way to Lodi,” Thomas cried in German but their visitor was staring at Prometheus who sitting in the straw like an enormous Rumpelstiltskin.
“By all the saints in heaven, you don’t see many blackamoors in Lombardy so who in the name of St Maurice’s big black arse are you?” said the landsknecht but before Prometheus could answer, the handgunner realised that all four travellers were dressed entirely in black.
“St Jude’s balls! You’re wearing the livery of the Black Band!” he exclaimed and he shouted to his comrades to come and help him take charge of the landsknechts’ hated enemies. Seconds later he was joined by two other men who were also armed with handguns.
“These cowardly scum must have legged it from the French siege works at Pavia,” said the second landsknecht, staring at the stolen clothing Thomas and the others had neglected to change.
“On your feet you garlic chewing cocksuckers and keep your hands where we can see them or you’ll get a barrel full of hot stones up your arse. You’re either deserters or spies but one way or another way Frundsberg will have you all dangling from the end of a rope before sunset!”
“Wait, it’s true we’ve come from Pavia and we are spies but we don’t serve the French or the Black Band. We’ve been sent in secret by Henry Octavius, King of England to gather information that may be useful to the emperor,” Thomas lied.
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