The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘No!’ screamed the Archbishop, backhanding his manservant, getting momentary relief from his frustration at the sound of the blow. ‘I do not want to hear about the difficulties. I know it is the day of the Palio. Do you think I am dressing like this for my pleasure?’

  He gestured for the other man in the room, the tailor, to approach again, and the old man did, nervously eyeing Cibo’s jewel-laden fingers. Very carefully, he continued to affix the ceremonial ermine to the collar. It required stitching, and the Archbishop was always fidgety with a sharp point near his throat.

  The tunic was of Cathay silk, the robes over it of finest Anatolian lambswool, dyed with the livid purples only found in certain muds in the streams of the high Atlas. The needlework had taken the Sisters of St Matilda two weeks to complete, the pearls mounted in a complex pattern denoting the astrological alignment that prefigured His Holiness’ birth. Woven into the gold cross that stretched from neck to waist and across the chest were tiny filigree patterns of a deeper reddish-gold. Only the most sharp-sighted would be able to see they were in the shape of a series of fighting cocks, engaged in the very act of the contest, wickedly curved spurs glinting at their heels, combs raised in the attitude of combat. As the Archbishop of Siena, he was above the rivalries that rent the city this one day of the year. As a Sienese of the Rooster contrada, he was as passionate as any of his tribe.

  The servant, hand raised to his throbbing cheek, spoke again, making sure he stayed out of the range of his master’s fists.

  ‘The word has gone out, Your Holiness. Your spies stroll the streets, the criers declare your generous reward in the taverns. Descriptions have been circulated.’

  The servant felt it unwise to mention the joke he’d heard that morning, already doing the rounds, based on the fugitives’ descriptions. It involved the sexual permutations wrought from a one-handed fool, a virgin and a Jew. He did not think the Archbishop would appreciate the humour.

  ‘And my brother?’

  ‘Your brother, Eminence?’

  Cibo flapped the tailor away and moved towards the servant, who backed off, hands raised nervously to ward off a blow.

  ‘My brother, yes, my brother, returned to the city last night. Sent for these five hours since.’ The voice was calm again, silky. ‘Why does the Duke di Linari not come?’

  ‘Eminence’ – the servant bumped into a pillar, was pinned there, his eyes seeking to avoid his master’s – ‘he sends word that he will attend when he can.’

  ‘When he … can?’

  ‘He is preparing, my Lord. You know, for the Palio?’

  The servant smiled, which was foolish. He had nowhere to retreat, and the blows fell on him from every side. He covered his face as well as he could.

  ‘The Palio! The Palio! Will you never cease squawking? On and on. I ask for my brother to come to me and you obviously failed to convey the importance of immediate response. Idiot! Dolt! Where is my whip? I will lash you to a bloodied mess. My whip, I say!’

  ‘Here,’ someone growled from the doorway, ‘you can use mine.’

  Cibo turned at the familiar voice to an unfamiliar and bizarre sight. A giant rooster stood there, crimson and emerald feathers across a vault of a chest, wings of chestnut brown, a black, silver and red coxcomb cresting a mask from whose centre protruded the sharp blade of a beak. The long neck of the bird was covered in white feathers, but in the middle were two slits. Behind them, something twinkled.

  Hand raised to strike again, Cibo paused. ‘Franchetto?’ he said. ‘What in hell’s jaws are you wearing?’

  ‘My colours.’

  The rooster strode stiff-legged into the room. The stockings were black and wound about with red and gold straps. At his groin, a monstrous codpiece proclaimed a cockerel’s chief function. At his heels, two curving Arab blades glinted. The bird stopped in front of the two men. The long neck bent down to inspect the Archbishop’s chest, the head on an angle, as if considering a tasty piece of food.

  ‘You have to hide your cock, being the impartial Archbishop, while I’ – and here he preened, displaying his leg, thrusting out at chest and groin – ‘I am free to display all the finery of my allegiance.’

  He turned, walked a few paces back. Flapping his wings, stretching them wide, he let out a huge crow.

  ‘Have you seen my latest trick? It’s better than a whip. Stand back and watch this. That’s right, another pace.’

  The rooster whirled into the air, leaping from one foot to the other, spinning round in a circle, heels high. The servant cowered against the pillar, his hands still raised to ward off a blow. The blade at the cockerel’s left ankle sliced his little finger off.

  ‘Cock a doodle dee,’ crowed the bird, ‘another victory to me!’

  As the servant stumbled from the room gushing blood, Cibo laughed. ‘Always so good to see you, brother.’

  ‘And you,’ said the bird, reaching up to pull off the headdress and mask in one piece. ‘Let me kiss you.’

  It was a moment Cibo dreaded; but, as a sibling and a Churchman, he could hardly refuse the embrace. It was a relief then to see that the face emerging from the feathers was less ravaged than usual, the high forehead under its dark thatch ruddy, that plug of a Roman nose, and the jowly cheeks unspotted by canker. He would never be the Adonis of his youth, dissipation had seen to that. But the new cure for the French disease appeared to be working, at least temporarily, and he wondered if it had had any effect elsewhere. The skin was clearer, but what of the mind? Cibo, in his studies, had often noted the link between the rotting faces of the syphilitic and the blinding insanity that also seemed to afflict most of its victims. But, of course, with Franchetto any progression was hard to calculate, for he had been mad from birth.

  And yet, Cibo considered, this has not stopped him becoming the most powerful man in Siena. After me. And it hasn’t been any evenness of mind that has got him there. Indeed, with the amount of blood Franchetto has had to spill to achieve power, the madness has been an advantage.

  The Cibo brothers, the Archbishop continued to reflect as the younger brother embraced the elder, together again. The power restored to Siena, the twin pillars of society, Church and state. Giancarlo running the holy, Franchetto the secular, just as our father planned.

  Whenever he hadn’t seen his younger sibling for a while, Cibo always marvelled at their physical difference. Down to the mothers, of course, which accounted for his own refined features and the peasant, big-boned coarseness of the Duke.

  Saying a little prayer in the hope that Papa, the late Pope Alexander, was enjoying some special torment in hell, the Archbishop hugged his brother back.

  ‘Big brother.’ Franchetto nuzzled into the other’s neck then turned to plant a kiss and whisper into his ear, ‘I have missed you. I have so much to tell you.’

  ‘And I you, little brother.’ Cibo disengaged himself from the large man’s embrace and turned to the tailor. ‘Leave us. Return an hour before the race.’

  When the man had retreated from the room, Cibo shrugged off the heavy wool cloak and went to fill two crystal goblets from the decanter. He took them on a tray back to the chair his brother had sprawled over, his huge legs straddling one arm, swinging restlessly. The Churchman knew he could not keep Franchetto’s attention long, especially on the day of the Palio.

  ‘Your choice,’ he said. Franchetto smiled and chose the left one. It was a game they always played, but it was a game with a serious history. Their father had died shrieking, poisoned by a brother. Not even a half brother.

  Sipping, Franchetto said, ‘And your travels? They were successful?’

  ‘Up to a point. I ran into certain difficulties. But I got what I was after.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Franchetto’s tone betrayed his boredom. ‘And what was that? You never told me.’

  In answer, Cibo threw the velvet bag into his brother’s lap and went to stand by the tall windows of the dressing chamber. On the street beneath the palace walls, costumed figures
darted around on the personal errands of the Palio.

  ‘It’s a hand.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You journeyed to England for some criminal’s hand? My gaolers take half a dozen every week. You could have had one of them.’

  ‘Do you notice anything special about it?’

  Franchetto turned it over and over. At last, with some triumph, he said, ‘It’s a woman’s hand.’

  ‘Very good. Anything else?’

  It took a while longer, but when the oaths came they were loud and vehement.

  ‘Yes! Six fingers!’ Cibo continued staring down at the street. ‘They used to fidget in the lap of Henry’s queen, Anne Boleyn.’

  ‘The witch? The whore majesty?’ Franchetto was animated now. ‘They say she knew tricks even my Cecilia is ignorant of. Which doesn’t leave much out.’ He placed it on top of his codpiece with a sigh. ‘If only the dead could awaken, eh?’

  The Archbishop turned from the window. ‘That is exactly the point.’

  Franchetto was puzzled. ‘But you’ve been gone the best part of two months. What have you kept this in?’ He sniffed it. ‘It doesn’t smell of brandy. Smells of … flowers.’

  ‘I haven’t kept it in anything.’

  ‘Then … Holy Christ! Holy Christ!’

  ‘And that is my other point. Look, pick it up off the floor and put it back in the bag, will you? I can’t touch it. I can’t even look at it. I’ll explain why.’

  And to a now attentive Franchetto he briefly retold the story of his journey, the triumph and the setbacks, ending in the events of the night before in the chamber deep below them. His brother was suitably impressed with the tales, up to the last, when his humour got the better of him.

  ‘Oh, Giancarlo, big brother!’ He wiped tears from his eyes. ‘In the heart of your palace? In the middle of an orgy? You with that stag’s head? How frustrated you must be! But you still have the hand. You can try again. I’ll find you another virgin, it’ll be my pleasure. What more do you need?’

  The Archbishop kept his temper. Franchetto was the only person he had to do that with, and it gave him a pain in his stomach.

  ‘I need Abraham. Without him I cannot hope to free the essence of humanity latent in this hand. Which will make me – and you, dear brother – the most powerful men in Italy. No, in the world.’

  He went to look once more down into the street.

  ‘Make no mistake, brother,’ he continued, ‘it is vital we find both the Jew and these dogs who rescued him. For once the secrets of this hand are revealed, we will be in control of nothing less than the quintessence of life itself.’

  SEVEN

  THE PALIO

  It was a fine day for a horse race. The sun shone from a cornflower-blue sky, unblemished by cloud, yet the heat was tempered by one of those breezes the Sienese called ‘the breath of the Virgin’, fragrant with almond blossom, borne down from the Tuscan hills. In addition, the fountains had been scattered with rose petals and filled with the distillations of rosehip, so the sweet smell of that flower pervaded the city too. It was those scents, mingling with the musk of the chosen horses, one for each contrada, that created the particular savour all in the city adored. The citizens’ nostrils filled with it – that and the equally strong scent of money to be had. For on this one day of the year money flowed around the city like water from the thousand fountains, passing from the purses of rich and poor alike to the sellers of meat and wine, to the whores and the pickpockets, the fire-eaters and the stiltwalkers, to the men who gave odds on the race and those who sought to change those odds with bribes to jockey, trainer and groom. Fortunes won and lost, reputations shattered and made, lives ended in tavern brawls and alley assassinations and life begun in the same locations as the lust for money transformed to the lust for flesh. It was the day to put aside one’s identity and don another with a mask, to revel in the freedom granted by a disguise.

  It was the day of the Palio.

  But in the stable of Lucrezia’s house, the heart of the Scorpion contrada, people were not thinking of fortunes, they were thinking of survival. The stallion on whom the hopes of so many rested stood unattended in his stall, for one of Lucrezia’s brothers was its trainer and her nephew its jockey, and they too were crouched down on the stable floor hearing of a night of horror beneath a palace.

  When she finished telling her tale, the tears flowed again down the cheeks of Maria-Theresa. She wiped them away with her one free hand, the other holding on tightly to the only hand of her saviour, as it had almost from the moment they emerged from the pool. The Fugger was unspeakably content with this and made no effort to free himself. In his life, he had never held the hand of a woman other than his mother. And she had never caused such strange and complex stirrings within him. The life he observed in this girl, who was also a woman – the innocence, the purity yet power of her feelings – was of such a force it made him feel like a page of new paper with nothing written upon it, no years of degradation, no tales of endless nights scrabbling for survival in a gibbet midden. It made him feel alive. He was conscious of the glances that came his way from her family, but they were not hostile, just curious. The only thing distracting him from the way Maria-Theresa’s hand moved in his was the mirror sight opposite where his comrade Beck clutched at the old man’s hand.

  He looked, and remembered the woman’s body swiftly hidden again under the man’s clothing. He’d kept silent, knowing that if someone felt they had to go to that trouble to conceal who they were there must be good reason. He knew about concealed identities. He would wait to know … hers.

  As Beck looked away briefly from the father she had not seen in ten years, she met the Fugger’s eyes and she too remembered. It troubled her, yet she’d only donned the disguise to achieve what she had now achieved, to hold her father again in her arms. In a whispered conversation she’d begged Abraham also to keep her secret for a while, yet she wasn’t sure why. Except that now was perhaps not the time to be herself again. For as she listened to Lucrezia, she knew danger was far from past.

  ‘I have been out on the streets. There’s a prince’s ransom offered for the capture, alive, of this gentleman’ – she indicated Abraham with her hand – ‘and not much less for the rest of you. The gates are all shut and heavily guarded. The spies of Church and state are spreading throughout the city. I myself was asked if I knew a woman who was looking for a kidnapped virgin. It is only a matter of time before someone takes the gold and talks.’

  Maria-Theresa spoke. ‘We cannot give them up, Mother. I would have died. I will die before I let them go.’

  ‘No one is speaking of giving them up, child. But how do we save them?’

  Beck said, ‘All the gates are locked?’

  ‘All save the Porta Pispini. And men with good descriptions search anyone trying to leave.’ Lucrezia moved to the stallion in its stall, stroked its neck. ‘What if we split you up? Wait till the revelry tonight. Even the guards will be drunk then.’

  ‘We will not be split up,’ said the Fugger, and looked at Beck who nodded, held his eye for a moment, blushed and looked away. ‘We must go to Montepulciano. We are to meet our comrade there, and in the meantime his friend there will shelter us at his inn.’

  ‘Montepulciano is still beyond the city walls. The hills there are said to be the source of many of the springs that fill Siena with water. The source—’ Lucrezia broke off. ‘The cisterns, Giuseppe. What do you think?’

  Her brother rubbed his grey stubble. ‘It is possible. I have not been down them for many years.’

  ‘I have.’ Maria-Theresa leant forward excitedly. ‘Giovanni took me there last year to play.’ Giuseppe gave his son the jockey a clout around the ears.

  ‘Cisterns?’ said the Fugger.

  ‘The rich in this city, about two hundred years ago during a plague, wanted their own water supply that could not be contaminated by us peasants.’ Lucrezia spat on the floor. ‘They built these chambers, tunnels, underground chann
els to bring it to them. Then more water was discovered and they fell into disrepair. The passage you came down to the pool was probably one of them. Some lead out, it is said, in the direction of Montepulciano.’

  The Fugger leant forward. ‘It is said?’

  ‘No one to my knowledge has ever followed them all the way out. But water still flows from them. And what comes in …’

  ‘… Must lead out.’ Beck stood. ‘We will take them. I will not stay here to be caught like a weasel in a trap.’

  ‘Now wait!’ The Fugger rose too. ‘I made a promise to myself. You all heard me. Not three hours ago. No more water. Ever. And you want me to go to a world of it?’

  ‘But I will be there.’ Maria-Theresa’s eyes shone up at him. ‘I will lead you through them. There are many walkways. You won’t have to swim much.’

  ‘It’s that “much” that concerns me.’

  But the squeezing of the girl’s hand did a little to calm him. A fragile calm that was immediately broken by her next words.

  ‘The problem is the way into them. Giovanni and I only know of the one. It’s a hidden entrance. But it is in a corner of a public place.’

  ‘And where is that?’

  It was Lucrezia who answered. ‘The Piazza del Campo.’

  The Fugger choked. ‘But isn’t that where they hold this thing, this Palio?’

  Lucrezia smiled. ‘It’s where “this thing” starts and finishes. The bullfight was last night, the fist fight this morning. At noon the horses will be loosed through the city streets from there.’

  ‘Good.’ Beck was on her feet now, tying the slingshot around her. ‘The Campo is where we need to go anyway. I left Fenrir and our sacks with a stall holder there.’

  ‘Are you all mad?’ cried the Fugger. ‘It’s right beside Cibo’s palace! He – all of them – will be there!’

  Lucrezia’s smile never faded. ‘In a lifetime of doing it,’ she said, ‘I’ve discovered there is no better place to hide than in plain sight.’