The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  Her dark eyes flashed every time the door of the merchant’s house opened. They did not really expect anything other than the Archbishop’s servants. But there was always that little hope that they would try to move Jean. Anyway, every face noted was an enemy recognised. A youth had gone in two days before and Haakon had trailed him back to the university, more to stretch his legs than anything. The night before that, Giovanni, the Archbishop’s steward, whom Beck had recognised from Siena, had taken in four laughing women who had emerged an hour later sombre and quiet, the smallest among them weeping inconsolably. The steward had soon developed a vivid black eye and his rare excursions had become increasingly agitated. Of the Cibo brothers, though, there was no sign.

  Yet Beck did not blame them for not stirring out onto this street. Winter seemed to have bypassed autumn but the only effect here was the cold, because the roofs of the houses were so tightly linked above that no light or liquid penetrated. If any chill rain had fallen it might have done something to wash away the foul-smelling channel that clogged the roadway’s centre, muck thrown out to join it from every window. They had been fortunate, though, for the last of her gold from Venice had bought them what passed for luxury in Wittenberg, a room just bigger than the plank bed into which she, Haakon and Fenrir squeezed together. Most importantly, its window gave a view of the doorway behind which they knew Jean was imprisoned.

  It was Haakon who had managed to stop her first and every subsequent impulse to storm the place. Where he had learnt such sense, he was not sure. He would gladly throw himself into the thickest part of any fray, howling his Norse battle cries, and if it was just his own life he was risking he would not have hesitated. But his death would lead inevitably to the death of his friend. However glorious, such an end was mere vanity if, in the dying, he did not secure Jean’s survival.

  And the survival of this boy who, in a way he didn’t understand, Jean loved.

  ‘We wait, we watch, and we find another way,’ he said gruffly each time the lad reached for slingshot and knife.

  He kept them both occupied getting information. They would listen in on the conversations of those men-at-arms who were allowed out in twos and threes to inn and brothel, Haakon, familiar with that world, chatting to the whores, Beck pretending to doze over a mug of beer while the guards spoke in their native Tuscan which they thought no one else could understand.

  Between them, they learnt of the cellar where the prisoner was kept, and of the thrice-daily visits paid by their commander, from which he would emerge, sometimes swiftly, sometimes less so, always his distorted face mottled further with rage. They learnt of the frustrations of the brothers, the ceaseless bickering, the anger deflected onto hapless servants. And they heard many tales of Giovanni, trying to conjure entertaining gold from the dross metal of Wittenberg life. It was a town centred on the learning of the university and Luther’s steady construction of a new religion.

  ‘You’ll find more sin in a Neapolitan nunnery … and twice as good-looking whores!’ wailed the steward that evening, drawing sympathetic laughs from the three soldiers at the table.

  Beck had come downstairs to eavesdrop when she saw the Italians enter. Haakon was scouting the back of the merchant’s house again, hoping he’d missed something there. Despite his restraining of her, she knew he was growing more agitated by the hour with their inaction. He was as desperate to find a way in as she was.

  ‘If you don’t mind whores with beards!’ one of the soldiers declared.

  ‘They all have beards,’ said another. ‘You’ve just got to look at the right face.’

  More laughter, but Giovanni was not to be put off his whining so easily.

  ‘I tell you, if the prisoner doesn’t break soon’ – nausea swept over Beck – ‘then I will end up with no part of my body left to bruise. Did you see what that beast Franchetto did to me this morning?’ He raised a sleeve to reveal the marks where fingers had gripped and squeezed. ‘Entertain us, they say. Tease and entice us. But the dancers I find just clump, and the whores just yawn. In Siena, I have to turn away the entertainers, the standards are so high, the competition so fierce. Here, a drunken song is the best they can manage.’

  The rest of the whining faded into the background hubbub of the inn’s main room, for Beck’s thoughts had suddenly been caught by something within all the complaining. Her mind whirling, her eyes fixed on the table before her, she nearly missed Giovanni’s leaving. She sprang up and followed the Italian steward as he picked his way among the foul deposits of the street.

  ‘Signore! Signore!’ she called after him. Once he had stopped and let her catch up, she carried on in Italian. ‘Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing you in the inn back there.’

  ‘Jesu preserve me, a countryman!’ Giovanni exclaimed, trying to scrape something off his shoe onto a doorstep. ‘What ill wind blows you here, young master?’

  ‘The same as you, I think. I serve another who has business here. Though by the sound of it, my master treats me a little better than yours treats you.’

  This produced another wailing account of the miseries he had to endure. Beck listened, nodding in sympathy, then, when the steward finally paused for a second’s breath between lamentations, cut in, ‘But my master has not your problems. He brought his own entertainer with him from Bologna.’

  ‘Ah!’ cried Giovanni. ‘God be praised for the sense of the Bolognese. And what does this entertainer do?’

  Beck tucked her neck further into her collar, affecting embarrassment. ‘Well, this entertainer is my sister, sir, and she is a … uh, dancer, I think, would be the best way of putting it.’

  ‘A “uh, dancer”?’ The Italian’s eyes gleamed. ‘And does she have a “uh, speciality”?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir, most certainly. Her speciality is, is …’

  Beck was gazing furiously above the head of the steward, into a memory. It was of a time when her father was just a colleague of Giancarlo Cibo’s, before her flight to Venice. One of the Archbishop’s maidservants had taken a liking to the young and lonely Jewish girl and had let her play in areas of the palace that she cleaned. One of them was a room where Cibo displayed the results of his patronage. The statues were mainly flowing Greek and Roman nudes, men and women locked in fleshy embrace. The paintings were similarly decadent. She remembered one especially because she was told that the subject of it was Jewish.

  ‘My sister dances as Salome,’ she said. ‘Dances for Herod to win the head of John the Baptist.’

  The Italian was hopping from foot to foot, the filth on his shoes forgotten. ‘And does she ever perform this dance for anyone other than your master?’

  ‘Well, not usually. But my master is out of the city at the moment. And she is easily bored. She could be persuaded …’

  A fee was rapidly agreed, an advance paid, the arrangements made for later that night. The sum was high. Both of them knew they were not speaking of mere dancing.

  ‘You arranged what?’ Haakon bellowed an hour later.

  ‘Look, help me brush out this hair, will you? We haven’t got much time.’

  Beck had bought a small mirror in the shop next to the one where she had purchased the wigs. Between them they had spent most of the advance, but she hadn’t needed much else. Just some silk. Seven veils were what she remembered from the painting. Seven, dropped around the room, draped over furniture, over the watching, leering King.

  Such was Haakon’s bemusement at the idea that he found the brush in his hand and had even pulled it through the thick tresses of the wig a few times before he realised. He threw it down, just as Beck jumped up and began fiddling with the strings of her doublet, her back towards him.

  ‘Are you mad, boy? What happens when you are in there?’

  ‘When we’re in there. I’ve brought you a headsman’s mask as well, try it on.’

  He almost reached for it. ‘No! I mean what happens when you start to dance. They’ll see straight away, won’t they?’

  ‘
See what?’

  ‘See what? May the gods give me strength! That you’re a boy!’

  ‘Will they?’

  Beck had unbuckled the doublet and now pulled the undershirt off, swiftly followed by the bindings of cloth wrapped round and round the chest.

  ‘Of course they will,’ Haakon sighed. ‘You can’t fool … leaping Christ!’

  ‘What?’ Beck was facing him now, hands on hips. ‘You’ve never seen breasts before?’

  ‘Not on a boy, no,’ murmured a suddenly subdued Norseman. ‘Never on a boy.’

  It was strange. What was that word again? The one the Fugger used?

  Paradox. Another paradox. This one concerned pain. Because the greater the agony he endured, the greater the reward when he awoke later from his faint, flesh still imprisoned, mind quite clear. His tormentors would be gone, and the others could then arrive.

  They would all be there, sometimes together, as if they were sharing a meal again back in Tuscany, sometimes alone. Januc would speak of scrapes and scimitars, the infinite advantages of a curving blade. Haakon would tell him several of his mother’s homilies, each more untranslatable than the last. The Fugger would dance and shuffle before him, avoiding his eyes.

  When Beck came it was different. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, that he had been unable to say before, in their little time together. His strength had always lain in actions not words, and he regretted that now, because he was suddenly unsure if she knew how much he loved her, how much that sudden recognition had shifted a weight that had pressed down on him since his wife and child had died, like a stone rolled away from the entrance of a cave, letting in the light. Yet now she told him she understood without his words, let him know it was the same for her – that he had arrived in the mansion of her heart and painted every room there a different colour.

  That morning, Cibo had joined his bodyguard, and his dispassion had been much more painful than the brutality of the German. As Jean awoke from his enforced sleep, he twisted in his bonds and agony took him again. As there was no one there, he allowed himself a scream.

  The hand that touched him then was familiar and strange at the same time. He was comforted by its coolness, the way the fingers traced the bones of his face, bringing relief to the harm inflicted there.

  She stood before him, that smile upon her face. The filigree of grey that had run through her hair back in the Tower was gone. It was all black now, except for the tones of red, like peonies scattered on some Loire hillside.

  Anne Boleyn raised the hand again, let the six fingers move over him, feeling out his hurt, a balm where they touched. The arm they had broken was knit again, the leg also. When she joined his ribs, his breathing came clear for the first time in days, and he breathed deeply, inhaling her summer-tinged fragrance.

  ‘They have wronged you, Jean,’ she said, a deeper darkness in her eyes.

  ‘Oh, my Lady,’ he replied. ‘That does not compare to the wrong I have done you.’

  ‘What wrong?’

  ‘My failure. Your enemies have taken what you entrusted to me, what I swore to defend. Your cause is lost.’

  She leant into him, laid each of her hands on either side of his head, as she had done that night. ‘Did you not say “while I am alive I will not give up hope”?’

  He smiled at that, for hope had left him some days before, as he heard his body break.

  Her smile matched his. ‘This should tell you something, Jean Rombaud. It reminds you of my promise, the one I made you on the scaffold: “We two shall meet again.” And not just in a dream.’

  She was gone then, and the sunlight left with her. Chased away, perhaps, by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  As well as the brazier, carried on metal poles by the Tuscans, two lanterns were brought in now. Heinrich held one, the Archbishop the other. When Jean saw him, his defiance wavered a little. The man knew too much about pain.

  The cleric came up to him, raising the lantern to study the results of his last efforts.

  ‘It’s interesting.’ The silky voice spread over him, a cough followed by the raising of a handkerchief to dab at lips. ‘What one man can bear that another would have already died from. Thresholds, eh? An interesting word. Limits, and things to cross over, both. You and I have witnessed many cross the threshold between this life and the life to come, haven’t we, Executioner? I can never experience that moment enough, can you?’

  Jean was silent, giving his enemy nothing.

  ‘How fitting that we will share it now. You will know more about it than me, alas for you. Though I am sure you crave release from this life, do you not? Are you ready to cross the threshold? Your journey from one hell to another is about to begin.’

  Cibo’s cough, the red marker on the cloth, gave Jean another weapon of words, his last perhaps. Through broken teeth, he chose each word with care.

  ‘It is true I know something of death. I have seen it written on a thousand faces. Yet I have never seen it so clearly as it is written on the face before me now. I may precede you to the flames, but you will burn beside me soon enough.’

  The Archbishop did not speak at first, and such little colour as he had vanished. He coughed, and a cloth raised too late failed to prevent the blood seeping down his chin. He turned away, mastered himself, turned back, a smile again in place.

  ‘We don’t need you any more, Executioner. Apollonius has decided he doesn’t require your information after all. The secret, he believes, lies in the actual flesh of that accursed hand. I suspected as much, the way its touch so affected me. So we will treat it with mercury, slice it, open it up. Especially that extra finger. He believes the core of power lies there. Harnessed, and who knows? I may yet deprive you of your companion of the flames.’

  Jean laughed. It was an absurd sound coming from a man hanging broken on a wall, and in a fury Cibo snapped, ‘I made the mistake of letting you live once. I shall now take the greatest pleasure in watching you die.’ Turning to his bodyguard, he added, ‘Let’s see how slowly we can make that happen, Heinrich.’

  The German wrapped a cloth around his hand and picked up a knife that had been resting on the coals of the brazier.

  ‘Shall I begin, my Lord?’

  A nod, and the knife was borne forward. Instinctively, Jean shut his eyes, raised his head, tried to think of Tuscany, of Beck. He felt the heat approaching his flesh …

  There was a tentative knocking at the door. The blade was removed a little, and Jean opened his eyes again to see Giovanni standing in the doorway. The steward gazed in fascination at the suspended, bloodied man, the words he’d come to speak lost.

  ‘Well, fool?’ Heinrich bellowed at him.

  ‘The … the … the entertainer is here my … my Lord.’

  ‘What entertainer? Ah, ah yes …’ Cibo turned to his bodyguard. ‘Giovanni thinks he has found some Italian whore to dance Salome of the Seven Veils for me, then satisfy me afterwards. Well, she’ll have to wait. We will not be long, I think.’ He paused as Giovanni turned reluctantly in the doorway and the blade once more approached. ‘No, stop.’ A smile came to the reddened lips. ‘I am forgetting, Heinrich. Pleasure protracted is pleasure twice as keen. The same goes for pain, of course. Let us leave our friend here to anticipate his final mortification a little longer. His dying will be all the sweeter when I have had the – how shall I say it? – the little death this whore will give me. And since Franchetto has gone into the night with his men, I shall not even have to share her. Only if you care to, my dear Heinrich?’

  The German stiffened and walked to replace the weapon on the coals.

  ‘I will watch over you, my Lord, as always, and that is all.’

  ‘Really, Heinrich. Will you never learn? Pleasure and pain, my friend. Pleasure and pain.’

  They left the brazier, and its heat filled the little cell, the first Jean had felt in he knew not how long. He was grateful for it, and the light as well. It made shadows move against the walls and in th
em his companions seemed content to sit and wait for him to die.

  Haakon couldn’t help but stare. His vision was obstructed by the narrow eye slits of the mask, so he needed to turn his head from side to side to see all of her.

  Her! This is what was so hard to accept. It was the same person he’d glanced at a thousand times. And it was not the same. How could he ever have thought Beck anything other than a woman? A lovely one too, small but well shaped at breast, a slim waist, and features of face which, when seen in the context of womanhood, were not unpleasing. Not that he could see them all now. A veil covered them, rosy-hued like the others draping her. They did not fully conceal, they hinted at a desired revelation. One at each breast, one for each leg, a partial skirt over the hips. Under that he could just make out the darker patch of cloth that lay at the source of the most womanly part of her, held there by a taut silken cord. The seventh veil.

  He had to look away. The black hair of his wig spilled out from under his headsman’s mask, making him itch wherever it touched. She said it concealed him in some way. It annoyed him in many. He scratched vigorously. They had made him leave his axe in the corridor outside the room, otherwise his hands would have been occupied.

  ‘Stop it!’ Beck hissed at him. ‘You’re like a bear in a beehive. You’re meant to stay unnoticed. They won’t watch me with you doing St Vitus’ dance.’

  ‘Well, your wig hasn’t got fleas!’ he hissed back, still scratching.

  Beck sighed and struck a pose, leg out, a bare foot reaching from beneath the silk. It had been an offcut, but it had still cost her most of Giovanni’s advance, yielding just enough material to make the costume. She was never sure about women’s clothes, but Haakon’s lascivious then embarrassed reaction showed it was probably all right. Yet now she was standing there in that small, cold room, the enthusiasm that had swept her forward was gone, replaced by doubt and fear.