The French Executioner

by C. C. Humphreys

  ‘Surrender, dog!’ yelled Heinrich. ‘Surrender and we’ll make your death a swift one.’

  Haakon tipped his head to one side. ‘Hmm. Lots of words there I don’t understand. Perhaps you’d like to come over here and explain them to me.’

  A horrendous spluttering of blood accompanied the next words.

  ‘Take him!’ screamed Giancarlo Cibo. ‘Rip him apart!’

  They could only come two at a time along the narrow bridge – one for Haakon and one for Fenrir. As they grappled with the first of them, others waited their turn behind.

  Haakon’s giant axe flashed, a scything crescent in the waxing moonlight, impossible to stop. They were strong warriors, the elite of the Archbishop’s guards, but they died as they came and each body underfoot made it harder for the next pair to advance. Four lay there before someone thought to bring boar spears from the horses, and their thrusts began to force Haakon back across the bridge. The points could not pierce his armour but one finally caught Fenrir in the chest and Haakon could do nothing as his friend was lifted from beside him, snapping and snarling still, to fall under a thunderstorm of blows. Then the thrusting forward began again, and though Haakon cut and sliced the heads off many of the spears, there were always others to replace them. He was pushed back the length of the bridge and knew that once he reached the end it would all be over.

  One spear thrust, slipping beneath his breastplate, snagged in his chain armour; it pulled him forward, off balance, and a sword cut down and bit into his left arm just above the wrist. Another snickered in and cut him in the exposed leg. Roaring, Haakon dropped to one knee. Hurling his axe forward, he saw it lodge in the forehead of a man too keen to take advantage of his fall, but the sword he drew barely parried the three that came at him. Someone had managed to slip round him at the bridge’s end and he only half-parried the blade dancing in at his side, turning the force from a death to a wounding blow, taking it in the other arm.

  Forcing strength into his cut leg, Haakon stood and with a cry of ‘A Haakonsson!’ he hurled himself into the heart of his tormentors. There he was immediately pinned by two spears, then two more, his mighty body lifted on them and swept up and over the parapets of the bridge.

  Haakon spiralled down and hit the water flat. Instantly caught in its maelstrom he was tumbled downstream to clatter into the rocks. Out of sight of the bridge, an eddy caught and held him in its whirling embrace. Round and round he spun, as the water around him turned red.

  Strange, he thought, but where are the Valkyrie? In the tales, this is when they come.

  Then he felt their hands upon him, dragging him awkwardly from the water, and he knew he was bound for Valhalla, the only heaven he could desire. The hands felt a touch rougher than he’d expected – they belonged to blonde maidens after all – but, he thought, you probably had to be that tough to be a Valkyrie. As this world faded away, he looked forward to the other side, to an eternity of feasting and fighting until the last battle. But most of all he looked forward to seeing his father there. For at last he had a tale worthy of his hearing!

  ‘Shh! Is that them?’

  The whisper was so close to Jean’s ear that her lips actually touched it. He shifted just slightly, raising his head to the gap in the barn wall. Even such a tiny movement gave him pain.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he gasped. ‘Haakon has held them well.’

  He sank back down, glancing around the unfamiliar barn in the familiar village. Pont St Just! Was it mere months since he’d first grappled with Death at the inn here? It seemed an age, a lifetime before, too many other reminders of his mortality since.

  ‘Then I should go. Pick my position.’

  Beck made to rise but the slight pressure of a broken hand held her down.

  ‘Beck …’ He did not know what to say. ‘Rebecca.’

  ‘You agreed. It is our only chance.’

  ‘You decided. What chance will you have? You against however many Haakon has left.’

  ‘I have a stone for each of them.’ She rattled her pouch. ‘Besides, they are warriors for the open field. The streets are mine.’

  ‘This is not Venice, my love. No alleys and canals where the Sicarii can lurk and strike. One street, twenty houses.’

  ‘Are you trying to weaken me?’

  ‘I am trying to make you see sense. You have succeeded in your cause, your father is safe and waits for you. This way we will all die.’

  ‘Only they will die.’ She raised the slingshot into the moonlight slanting through the barn’s uneven planks. “When despair comes, I concentrate first on my cause – you – then on my good right arm.” Remember that time, under that awning in Toulon, when I said that?’

  ‘I remember the peach juice on your lips. I remember it confused me greatly.’

  Smiling, she bent those lips to kiss him now. As she pulled back, he reached up and held her neck.

  ‘Will you not obey me in this, woman?’

  ‘When we are married I will, of course, obey your every command.’

  ‘Somehow,’ said Jean, ‘I doubt that.’

  She stood above him, moonbeams striping her. ‘Can you get yourself onto the horse?’

  ‘I will have to.’

  ‘Wait till you hear me crow like a cockerel. I will either be victorious or taken then. Either way, ride to the crossroads. Fulfil your vow.’

  Then she was gone.

  Jean sank back into the hay to wait. Behind him the horses chewed slowly, the barn door unlatched and began to bang in the light wind. He lay there, waiting for the cockerel’s cry and the false dawn it would announce. Waiting for a beginning and an end.

  At the eastern edge of Pont St Just, the roadway narrowed between a house and its barn, the longer stalks of their thatching meeting to entwine over the gap. It was barely wide enough for a farm cart or two men riding abreast. Twenty paces beyond Beck waited, beneath the eaves of the next house, the rope taut in her hands, her thumb pressing the stone firmly into the leather pouch.

  There were hoof beats and then the moonlight revealed the shape of two faces so she aimed for the nearest. The whirring was like the wings of an owl beating in the still night air, the whistle of stone its last cry as if giant talons had reached down and wrenched Bruno-Luciano from his saddle, so suddenly did Franchetto’s bodyguard leave it.

  ‘Jesu save me!’ the younger Cibo cried, spurring his horse through the gap, crouched low with his head behind his horse’s neck. Four of his men did the same and rode to a house in the middle of the village. The fifth was too slow to push through and, when he attempted it, joined his comrade, face down and dying in the dust.

  Heinrich took shelter in the lee of the first house. He saw the shadow flit between the buildings but he made no move to stir. Twice already he had taken a stone from that slingshot and the pain in his head, and especially in his wrist, was still with him. He was not going to risk any more.

  ‘He’s behind the house to the left!’ he shouted. ‘Flush him out!’

  ‘I do not take orders from you!’ screamed Franchetto. ‘And I want the Frenchman!’ He turned to his remaining men. ‘Search the houses! Drive the people out into the street!’

  The first dazed villagers had already struggled forth, and they were joined by the tardy, driven from their beds by the flats of Italian swords. They gathered in shivering groups before their doorways, terror plain on their faces, increasing when one soldier suddenly cried out in shock and agony to plummet down at their feet.

  The barn was the last structure on the western edge of the village, and Jean could see that, despite Beck’s successes, it was only a short time before he was discovered. Cockerel or no cockerel it is time to move, he thought, and he began the agonising process of shuffling towards his horse. This was the most docile of the three, the packhorse, but the night’s shrieks had made it nervous and, try as he might, Jean was unable to mount. He had no strength to hold it steady. It whinnied and moved round and round the barn, evading him.

/>   He had just succeeded in pinning the beast in a corner when the doors of the barn were flung open and there, framed in the moonlight of the doorway, stood Franchetto Cibo.

  ‘At last!’ he yelled in triumph. ‘Your head is mine, Frenchman.’

  His long legs carried him across the barn floor in two strides, his sword rising as he came, up and over in a giant killing circle. Jean had no weapon with which to defend himself and no strength to lift one if he’d had one. He could only watch his death descend, flashing through the silver moonbeams.

  Then a strange thing happened. Something else flashed, and the unstoppable blade stopped just above the unmoving head. Stopped in a scream of metal on metal, in a flurry of sparks shooting into the darkness. It was like a short, sharp cry in the night, followed by a drawn-out wail as the arrested sword began a swift descent down a curving blade, all its frustrated power causing it to bury itself deep in the wooden rail of a cow stall.

  ‘Not yet, I think,’ said Januc.

  Twisting the scimitar from under the heavier blade, the janissary plunged it into the younger Cibo’s chest. Januc couldn’t decide which face before him bore the more astounded expression, but Franchetto’s changed the swifter as he died.

  ‘Januc!’ Jean had stumbled forward in shock, and the two men were close. ‘How? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The Croatian lowered Franchetto’s body to the barn floor, then pulled out the scimitar. ‘Once I had my money safe with some bankers in Augsburg, I … I became curious. I needed to know what became of you.’

  ‘Loyalty after payment? You have changed, mercenary!’

  ‘Shh!’ Januc ran his finger nervously along his moustache. ‘Do you want everyone to know?’

  Just then, a cockerel crowed, loud, near, suddenly cut off.

  ‘He’s up early.’

  ‘It’s Beck. Can you help her?’

  ‘Of course I c— Her?’

  ‘Too long to explain now. Can you?’

  ‘I can try. And you?’

  ‘If you will help me onto this cursed horse, I must ride for the crossroads.’

  Shouts grew nearer, Franchetto’s men seeking their master out. Januc lifted Jean easily into the saddle.

  ‘Oh, I have something for you.’ Reaching up, the janissary pulled something long from behind his back. ‘Your sword, Master Executioner,’ he said, and Jean saw the grip, the green leather strapping he’d so carefully retied the last time he had used the weapon for its true purpose. In London, a lifetime before.

  ‘Where … ?’ was all Jean could say before the first of the Italian guards ran around the corner, his cry of ‘My Lord!’ cut off by the sight of the body on the ground. The man, seeing the janissary drop into fighting stance, turned and ran, crying for reinforcements.

  ‘An Englishman I met.’ Januc handed the sword to Jean. ‘But that story will also have to wait. As will the one about Haakon.’

  ‘You saw him die?’

  ‘I saw him.’ Returning voices rising in alarm, ‘Later for that too. Ride, Frenchman, ride to your destiny. And I will try to find Beck.’

  With that, he slapped the horse’s haunch and the animal bolted, scattering the four men approaching the doorway. They quickly regrouped and advanced into the barn.

  Four! thought Januc calmly, left hand forward, sword arm back, making a large circle of sinew and scimitar. I can take four.

  The pouring of distressed villagers out onto the streets had made Beck’s task easier, and harder. Her darting form was less easily spotted among the throng, but it also made her targets harder to select. Nevertheless, she had managed to kill another of the soldiers that followed her. She didn’t think there were many left.

  It was while trying to work her way back down towards the barn where Jean lay that she was caught between houses and hit by a metal bar flung hard across her chest. The man who did it thought it enough, and he bent over his victim close enough to take the full thrust of Beck’s long knife, his dying weight forcing his body down upon the blade and upon her. She was struggling to shift his weight when she heard the voice above her, the voice she most dreaded to hear, accompanied as always by the now ragged cough, and this time by a little pricking of steel under her ear.

  ‘Well, well, my Salome. Together again at last.’

  The body was pulled off her, the blade she tried to extract and stab with again was turned aside by a gauntleted fist, and her face was turned and pressed into the mud.

  ‘I’ll kill her now, my Lord.’ Heinrich’s knee pressed into Beck’s bruised chest, causing agony to pass through her limbs. He reached for the knife at his belt.

  ‘Kill? My Salome? When she still owes me the finale of her performance?’

  ‘My Lord—’

  ‘When we have the hand, Heinrich, I told you. Not before.’ A handkerchief, once milk white, now nothing but vivid red, was raised again to his lips. ‘Bind her. Bring her. We must look for my brother.’

  It was then that Beck threw back her head and let forth the cockerel’s cry. Heinrich swiftly cut it short with a backhand to the face.

  ‘You will not be crowing soon,’ he said, and swiftly bound and gagged her.

  Mounting, with her before him, he followed the Archbishop to the barn, the last building in the village. He found him gazing down at the six bodies there.

  ‘Who is that?’ Cibo was pointing at the stranger who lay in the centre of a circle made by four of his brother’s men.

  Heinrich swiftly checked the fallen. ‘It is strange,’ he said, ‘but this man fought beside me at Munster. He helped us take the gate.’

  ‘He has also helped my brother to hell.’

  Cibo leant forward, blood now running unchecked down his chin. There was no time for sentiment, even if he was capable of feeling any. If he did not get that hand back he would be joining his brother soon enough, and then they would have an eternity of flames together to lament their swift exit from this world.

  ‘Jean Rombaud is not here. He must have gone to the crossroads. Let us ride!’

  As the horses departed, Januc opened his eyes. There was nothing more he could do here but die, he supposed. Which was a pity, but at least he was dying a rich man, so one of his ambitions had been achieved. He’d meant to die in a bed though, at a venerable age and surrounded by at least five young wives. Still, maybe he’d be carried away to that place the pagan Haakon was always talking about. It wasn’t the feasting – from what he’d seen Norse table manners were appalling – and, of course, he never drank liquor. But all those beautiful maidens would be fine. With so many drunk Vikings about, he’d be able to take his pick.

  Haakon, he thought as his eyelids slowly shut. Wish I’d had time to tell Jean about Haakon.

  ELEVEN

  THE RECKONING

  Ragged clouds scudded across the face of the moon, striping the gibbet in silver. Gusts of wind, in sudden sharp surges, stirred the metal cage and, having no occupant to steady it, the frame swung back and forth on its hook. Metal grating on metal produced a steady scraping, like the faintest cries of the damned.

  It was as cold as he remembered it, this desolate place, but at least this time he was on the outside of the cage, though his limbs, broken as they were, felt as imprisoned. He remembered how he had done a survey when he’d first woken up here, a closed-eyes battlefield study of his wounds. He would not do that now. He would not know where to begin the tally. All he did know was that he was so tired the urge to slip from his horse onto the cold earth to sleep was almost irresistible – and the task of digging almost impossible.

  Glancing up, he tried to draw strength from the moonbeams. He saw, as he had done ever since he was a child, a face in the moon. He had heard others describe the man up there, but for him it had always been a woman gazing down, one neither young nor old and who seemed, in the fragments of moving cloud, to be speaking to him, telling him secrets. Tonight, with the wind and shreds of grey cloud, the movement was more than that, not merely a mouth transformed
but every feature: eyes, nose, brow, ears, all shifting, realigning into faces, imaginary to start with then increasingly familiar. It was as if the moon were a chronicle of his progress from this spot and his return to it. Showing him the people he had encountered.

  The dashing, heretical Count de Chinon developed Da Costa’s toothless grin. Maltese Gregor smiled insincerely, while Big Nose raised a cloud pomander, lowering it to reveal Ake’s pleading eyes. Lucrezia of the Scorpions gave way to Mathias van Frew, beckoning him back to Montepulciano, and mercenary became mercenary with Makepeace’s bald head gleaming. A mad prophet led out his enemies, the twisted distortion of von Solingen, the brutal features of Franchetto Cibo, the refined ones of his brother, a tear-drop cloud streaming like blood from his mouth. At the last, his friends came, led by the Fugger’s mad smile: Januc with a gleam of gold in his eyes, Haakon with his equivalent lust for battle. And at the very last, the moon returned to womanhood, to the beauty of his Beck and finally, and for longer, the offset eyes of his Queen, Anne Boleyn.

  He half fell from the horse, reaching up to pull at the turf-lifter Haakon had carried ever since Munster. It slipped past too-weak fingers and in its fall dislodged the sword that Januc had thrust up into the saddle bags. He managed to catch that, even draw it slightly from its scabbard. Leaning it against the upright of the gibbet, he bent down for the turf-lifter, dragging it the few paces to the exact centre point where the four roads met.

  He had barely begun to dig when a horse’s neigh alerted him. He only just made it back to his sword by the time they rounded the bend from the village.

  ‘Well, Executioner.’ Cibo’s words rode out on a smoky plume in the frigid air. ‘Here we are again.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  Jean tried to stand upright, resting his hands on the pommel of his sword. He saw Beck was alive, twisting against her bonds, against the gag that held her mouth.

  ‘The hand. Give it to me.’ The words were wheezed out.