The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  A mixture of cheers and boos greeted the naming of the old and current enemy. The Florentines had besieged the town again, not five years before.

  Raising his voice above the tumult, Giovanni went on. ‘To achieve the right theatrical effect, and to show kindness to those who strayed from God’s honest path once in their lives and paid such a heavy price, the Archbishop has requested that all one-handed men, I say those who through accident or punishment have lost one hand and who want to earn honest coin for three days and nights and partake of good food and wine even better than this – yes, let’s crack open another barrel now – and sleep on feather beds right in the heart of the Holy Residence attended by the maidens of the Archbishop’s household’ – the largest roar of all greeted this offer – ‘I say these lucky, handless men should immediately, or even sooner, present themselves to me. Redemption awaits the sinner, comfort and luxury the reformed. And a chance to be at the centre of this spectacular retelling of our heroic history.’

  One-handed men abounded in any town in Europe, unlucky thieves mainly whose lives might have been spared but whose existence was bleak after such a maiming. The free wine had lured a few such already and they eagerly rushed forward to surround Giovanni at the prospect of more.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Beck whispered, for the Fugger had got up and was divesting himself of his sack.

  He knew that discussion or too much thought would weaken him, so he said quickly, ‘You wanted to get into his palace. This could be the way.’

  ‘You’d put yourself into that demon’s clutches? Are you mad?’

  The Fugger dropped the sack at her feet. ‘As mad as you. For it’s what you’ve been trying to do.’

  ‘But I have a … a very important reason. Why would you do this?’

  The Fugger thought for a moment. ‘I have a reason too. The Queen’s hand is in there. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when Jean arrives, we could have it for him?’

  The mention of that name again. A vision of his arm holding up the waterseller’s awning. She’d said something that had made his eyes narrow, and look within her own. And then he was gone.

  ‘He’s on the death galleys. He’ll never come back.’

  The Fugger just smiled and said, ‘But of course he will.’

  ‘Fugger!’ Beck grabbed him by the handless arm. ‘People never return from Cibo’s dungeons. Never. I will not hear of you again. Just as I have never heard from my father.’

  She had blurted it out, something she had not told anyone in ten years.

  ‘Your father is in there?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think so. If he is still alive, which I feel he is, he is in there. Cibo’s prisoner. He makes him do … terrible things.’

  ‘All the more reason for me to go.’

  ‘And never return? Are you so eager to be lost again? How can I help you if I do not know where you are?’

  He thought for a moment.

  ‘Wait!’ he said, then whistled, and the raven, who had flown off to harry pigeons by the tower, flew down and settled on his shoulder. He stroked its head, just between the lustrous sable eyes, and it curved down to his touch, lulled by the caress. Carefully he reached up, took the whole glossy body in his cupped hand and tucked it under his clothes into the small of his back. ‘Daemon will fly between us. He will bring you news of me.’

  ‘You are mad,’ was all Beck could manage.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been told.’

  She watched him walk right up to the Archbishop’s manservant, and as he walked she saw him begin to adopt the cringing, hopping, shuffling gait she somehow knew had been his life before.

  ‘Master,’ said the Fugger. ‘Ooh, kind master, look what I have for you here.’

  And he thrust the stump right into Giovanni’s face.

  Heinrich caught the recoiling Italian and thrust him back towards his latest recruit. He had the oddest sensation that he’d seen this gibbering fool somewhere before, but his head still hurt badly, his vision was still blurred and he put it down to that. He hadn’t chopped off any hands in Italy after all. That activity had taken place years before, back in Bavaria.

  Shaking himself to clear the mists, he barked, ‘Come on, this will do for a beginning.’ And, using the big club he always carried in these streets, he none too gently began to shepherd his half dozen or so recruits out of the Campo and along the Via del Pellegrini towards the Archbishop’s palace.

  Beck followed, watching the Fugger spinning round and round, doing his little dance. Pausing before the baptistry, for a moment he froze and raised his one hand in a gesture that could only have been a farewell. Then he was through the archway, and the black gates swung shut upon him.

  THREE

  THE SEA FIGHT

  ‘A sail! Three sails! To larboard!’

  It wasn’t the fact of the cry but the tone of it that froze every person on the Perseus, Muslim and Christian, freeman and slave. Sails were a common sight on this busy sea. They did not draw forth the edge of terror that all could hear in the lookout’s voice.

  Ake heard it, suspended upside down, bleeding from his chest wound and the three gashes where the skin had been torn from his back. Corbeau, poised above him, knife in hand and deciding where to make his next incision, heard it. Jean, Januc, Haakon and Da Costa heard it, and their eyes swivelled to the source of the fear. On the quarterdeck, de la Vallerie heard it and reached for his telescope.

  ‘Hell’s minions!’ he thundered and, without removing the instrument from his eye, bellowed at Corbeau, ‘When this is over I want that lookout flogged to death. How did he let us get this close?’

  He studied the red curved sails tacking against the wind that filled the Perseus’s own sail. With that behind him and more notice he could have outmanoeuvred, then outrun, these three. They had more rowers, but they were heavier galleys and a galliot would always take them with a following breeze. But they were spaced wide, a net thrown out to trap him. Now it might have to come to a fight in which he was heavily outnumbered. Unless … De la Vallerie had served on these waters for twenty years. He knew a trick or five.

  ‘Corbeau, get onto the gangway. Double time.’

  ‘Aye, Captain.’ Corbeau stuck his flaying knife into his belt and turned back to the deck. Then a thought came to him, and his one eye gleamed up at his leader. ‘Captain? Which direction?’

  De la Vallerie smiled. Corbeau hated it when he did that. ‘Straight at them, of course. Ramming speed.’

  Cursing him for a big-nosed lunatic, Corbeau nonetheless did what he was told. He wanted the flaying knife to stay in his belt, not to be used on his own skin.

  ‘Drummer! Strike double time!’ he yelled as he ran aft. ‘Row, you swine! Row till you burst!’

  ‘Augustin.’ The captain turned to his sergeant-at-arms standing nervously at his side. ‘Get your gun crew forward and your arquebusiers in position. I will be arming in my cabin. Call me when we are twenty cables away.’

  ‘Aye, Captain. And the prisoner?’

  De la Vallerie didn’t even glance back. ‘Punishment to continue after this little interruption. Leave him where he hangs.’

  Before they needed all their wind to row, there was a brief clamour on the benches.

  ‘Mershiful Chrisht!’ wailed Da Costa. ‘Three to one and he’sh attacking? Big Noshe hash gone mad.’

  ‘Not only that, old man.’ There was an edge to Januc’s voice that made Jean look at him. ‘They’re all galleys.’

  ‘Then we’re losht. We might ash well give up now.’ Despite this, the Portuguese still rose with the rest of them and fell back onto the bench at the whistle’s blast, pulling the big oar through the water, sending the Perseus scudding across the calm surface of the sea.

  ‘Why?’ yelled Jean. ‘What does it matter that they are galleys?’

  The old man just groaned, already losing his breath, so Januc continued for him. ‘Double the men over a galliot, double the oars. It’s a bigger boat and we could outrun t
hem, especially with a following wind.’ They rose and fell. ‘But they’ve stretched their mouth too wide.’

  Again Jean heard the tone, the excitement in it.

  Rising, falling, sweat already cascading off them all.

  ‘I don’t much care.’ Haakon grinned, a fire in his wild blue eyes. ‘I’ve never been in a sea fight. This should be fun.’

  ‘Fun?’ was all Jean got out before the crack of a whip across the Norwegian’s shoulders silenced him.

  Corbeau stood above them, and he had swapped his nine-thonged weapon for a bullwhip. In a fight, he knew you needed greater powers of coercion, especially for the Muslims. ‘Save your breath, you dogs!’ he cried. ‘Row harder, unless you want to end up prisoners of Allah.’ He moved further up the gangway, lashing out all the way.

  ‘Just one chance,’ muttered Haakon, staring after his persecutor. ‘Just one.’

  Januc needed no such cattle-hide encouragement; he was rowing as hard as he could. Two years I’ve waited for this, he thought. Two years for the corsairs once more to challenge the navies of Europe. He knew that he could drown, be killed by an Arab arrow or a Christian bullet, but he also knew that should he survive the inevitable corsair victory would see him free again. Free to return to the life he loved, to harry the enemy for the glory of his master, Barbarossa, and his own profit; to set up a base like he’d had in Tunis, with beautiful women to tend him, another oasis of blue tiles and flowing water under a desert sun. And if this lunatic captain wanted him to rush towards that fate, he was only too happy to help him. Former comrades awaited, he felt sure, under those curving sails, men who would know and honour the name of Januc. So he rose and fell and pulled as if the strength of his arms alone could deliver him to this glory.

  The lunatic in question returned from his cabin and made his way down the gangway to the forward deck. He was dressed in full armour of gleaming black, purchased in Milan at the cost of all the prize money from a particularly profitable voyage. It was light, he could dance and leap in it, and he could certainly wield the Turkish bow he held and the heavy rapier that dangled at his side. The armour was made of a series of alternating planes that would deflect all the arrows sent at him. He knew how the Turks and their pirate allies still preferred the old ways of saturation archery over firearms, imagining that, of the thousand arrows they sent at their Christian enemies, one would find a chink in their armour. He also knew why you paid for the best – no chinks.

  When he reached the foredeck, de la Vallerie had no need of his glass, for the three corsairs stood no more than half a league away and the distance was closing rapidly. He could make out their preparations for battle, the archers massing on the decks and in the rigging, lightly armoured swordsmen preparing the ramps, boarding nets and grappling hooks they’d need to latch on to this Christian prize seeming to slide so happily into their clutches. The middle ship of the three was where their captain was. De la Vallerie could just make out a white turbaned figure in black robes despatching men to prepare his own ship and signal to the others.

  He must be a happy man, de la Vallerie thought. A dainty little sardine, the Perseus, for him to snaffle up.

  The enemy was coming within range of their gun, which was called ‘No More Words’ for its actions spoke for itself. The master gunner, Ganton, was a surly Breton, a terrible drunkard in port but a sober expert of his trade at sea. He had been with Louis for ten years now, and though his manner was usually less than respectful his skill had saved them in many a desperate scrap. Louis felt sure it would save them now. He called down to him on the gun platform at the prow of the ship.

  ‘Ganton, the range, if you please.’

  ‘And about time, Captain. I’ve been lining that scum up for a while.’

  He bellowed his orders, sighted along the barrel, made some alterations to the elevation gears and touched a flaming taper to the hole. There was an immediate roar, and the solid shot he’d loaded sailed over the middle ship, clearing it by a mast’s height.

  The whole of the Perseus acted as the gun platform, and Jean felt the recoil buck through the ship which seemed to rear up and plunge back into the water. A few oars went astray at the sudden violence, and it took Corbeau several moments of bellowing and lashing to get his men to return to the rhythm.

  They were so close now they could hear the jeering of the corsairs’ crews.

  ‘Enough, Ganton?’

  ‘Enough, Captain. Next time I’ll take out their mast.’

  De la Vallerie smiled and said, ‘A mast it is, but not that one. Load with chain, and be ready for my command. Corbeau!’ He called down to his one-eyed subordinate. ‘Stop whipping that man and come up here!’

  When the brute was beside him, and his pomander, now filled with pot-pourri, was raised to ward off the smell – he’d found it the most effective mixture against the scent of blood – de la Vallerie explained, from behind it, the manoeuvre he required, then added, ‘As you know – stop twitching, man, and listen to me – as you know, the perfect galley should be as a young and charming girl in the dance whose every gesture reveals her gentility, her vivacity, her alertness, while preserving a becoming gravity. How much more so our delightful galliot Perseus. Well, she shall prove herself with one beautiful flourish. Then we shall see if all your training has paid off. And if it hasn’t’ – and here he lowered the pomander enough for Corbeau to see his smile – ‘either I or the Arab shall strip your skin from your body.’

  Having listened to further precise instructions and with a hasty glance at the example of the hanging and somehow still breathing Ake, Corbeau went cursing back to his station. Most of the crew had been with him long enough to react instantly to his orders, but the captain now required a bare second of perfect timing. All their futures depended on it.

  The enemy were close enough now for those on the Perseus to hear the words they sang to the blowing of their trumpets and the crash of cymbal and drum. At a signal from the captain, the Perseus’s own three musicians struck up, on trumpet, fife and tabor, and played a martial theme in reply.

  ‘Now, Corbeau, now!’ yelled de la Vallerie.

  Corbeau bellowed above the noise: ‘Triple time!’ The drum pounded and with the extra surge the Perseus seemed to leap out of the water and take to the air. Three strokes, and he cried again, ‘Ship starboard oars!’

  All the oars on the right side of the ship were pulled in, while the port side rowed on. The Perseus slewed viciously to starboard, but maintained its hurtling speed.

  As the bow came around, de la Vallerie said calmly, ‘Now, Ganton, if you please.’

  With a final spin of the adjusting gears, the master gunner put taper to hole. The sailcloth packets full of lengths of chain and shards of jagged metal hurtled at one hundred paces into the sails of the corsair galley to their right, shredding them, dropping mast, rope and rigging onto the Arab’s deck.

  ‘One stroke! Now ship oars!’ Corbeau cried.

  The port oars gave a final push that directed the ship almost directly down the throat of the Arab. Almost directly, for the manoeuvre had taken them just past and, with port oars shipped as well but with a strong wind still filling its sail, the wingless bird that was now the Perseus crashed at full speed along the length of the corsair, splintering its port oars, crushing those rowers not swift enough to dive beneath their benches.

  Within seconds it was over. It had all happened so swiftly, the enemy so surprised that only a few arrows had been loosed to fall harmlessly on the deck or stick in the sail.

  ‘Port and starboard oars out! Row, you bastards, row like you’ve never rowed before!’

  As they passed the aft end of the Arab ship, the oar tips were hurled into the water and the men immediately took the strain, to a triple-time beat. The corsair they had crippled lurched in their wake, and open sea lay ahead, with wind in their sails and the two other enemy vessels struggling to come about.

  ‘That will do, Corbeau,’ the captain called down. ‘They’ll n
ever catch us now.’

  He was so nearly right. He would have been but for the one man on the crippled ship that had kept his wits in the suddenness of the assault.

  John Hood was an Englishman and a former master gunner in King Henry’s navy. By a series of misadventures, through battle, piracy and slavery, he had finally found himself working for a new master – a heathen, to be sure, but one who gave him a life of profit and luxury he could never have dreamt of in Kent. Now he saw his first chance of booty since their defeat at Tunis slipping away to aft. He may have risen to captain’s rank but he was still a gunner at heart.

  ‘I’m not bloody ’avin’ that!’ he said.

  Swivelling the basilisk gun on the rear platform, a light weapon he usually used against infantry on a deck, he swiftly sighted along the barrel and fired it. The shot within, at that range a dense cluster of metal fragments, hit exactly what he was aiming at: the junction of mast and sail beam. It shattered, dropping the heavy wooden pole and the yards of cloth onto the deck and the crew of the Perseus.

  ‘Under!’ yelled Jean, and he, Haakon and Januc, with all the instincts of the battle-trained, dropped their oars and dived beneath their hard wooden benches, seconds before the collapsing rigging fell on top of them.

  Many were not so quick or lucky. When they emerged from the rolls of sail cloth, a grim sight met them. Some men were squirming, pinned between bench and beam, limbs crushed. Others lay still, heads split, already beyond the hardships of the oar. The screams were terrible.

  One struggling figure, shrieking and crying, was trying to force itself from under the cloth. Jean pushed his hands into a rent and ripped a hole in it, enough for the yelling, toothless head of Da Costa to emerge.

  ‘By Chrisht, ladsh,’ he shouted, ‘I thought I wash drowning there!’

  Haakon put his arms under the old man’s, but when he tried to pull him up the Portuguese let out a yell.