Assassin's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  With a quick look at his friends, Parmenio and Nicolo both miming their vehement wish that he be careful and re-join them as soon as possible, Skiouros disappeared past a cart full of barrels that gave off the sharp, acrid stink of pitch.

  A last glance back as he made his way between the endless shouting hordes, and he spotted his friends climbing the staircase. They would circumnavigate the fortress and then return to the bottom of those stairs. He had minutes.

  Pausing at a stack of barrels where a teamster argued with a guard about their destination, he clambered up onto the heavy oaken containers and slowly turned a circle, his hand above his eyes to dim the glare of the watery white sun. He blinked away moisture. There would be rain before nightfall, Parmenio the weather authority had stated this morning, and the air was already beginning to threaten with a misty blanket.

  It was an impossible task. Even Skiouros’ non-scientific mind could easily perform an estimated headcount and see that this undertaking was like trying to spot a florin in a room full of ducats. Again, on the verge of being overwhelmed with negativity, he forced himself to calm, to relax, to breathe slowly. With exaggerated sluggishness, he closed his eyes and conjured up a mental image of the man. He had seen him months ago in the Vatican apartments, dressed in the crimson robe and white cross of the Hospitallers, on the far side of the front row of escorting knights. He had not been wearing a hat then, and neither had he today. He was blond. Very blond, so as almost to be white. He had not submitted to the fashion for beards currently sweeping the upper classes, but had been poorly shaven on both occasions, his facial hair a slightly darker shade than his crown, more of a gold colour. He’d had a hooked nose and thin lips. One shoulder at a slightly lower slope to the other - almost certainly from some long-healed wound - which had given him a slight stoop and an odd walk.

  He opened his eyes and turned again, slowly.

  The man was nowhere in evidence. Damn it.

  Suddenly, he felt a thump against his calf and looked down to see the angry teamster glaring at him. ‘Any time you’d like to step down would be good for me, dickhead,’ the man snapped.

  Skiouros flashed him a smile that was half thanks and half apology and dropped from the barrel. A little walk further round the encircling ambulatory and he paused again. He was now perhaps a third of the way, fighting against the current of humanity for every step. Here the carts had thinned out and the mass was almost entirely formed of men porting goods and stacking and unstacking things. Nothing so easy to use as a platform for a short man here. Frowning, his gaze fell upon a horse tethered to a post against the inner drum keep wall. The beast bore a good saddle and a somewhat anachronistic caparison bearing a white eagle splayed upon a blue background. Skiouros glanced this way and that for a long moment, but the horse appeared to be entirely unattended and, without delay, he crossed to it, lifted his leg until he felt his thigh muscles creak and slipped his toe into the stirrup, grasping the saddle pommel to pull himself up above the crowd. The horse was a destrier, bred for battle and the joust, and was quite the largest steed Skiouros had ever touched. Consequently, it gave him an excellent view.

  As he scanned the crowd seething between the cylindrical keep and the outer defences, he turned the situation over in his mind. Was he on a fool’s errand? So what if the man was here and he had been assigned to Prince Cem’s guard at the Vatican. Even legitimately there could be a hundred reasons for the man to be here now, and almost none of them would have any bearing on Skiouros’ end goal. And yet there was just something that drew him to the matter. Something was wrong - sent a prickle among the hairs on the back on his neck. His free hand went reflexively to the hilt of the macana club looped at his belt. He knew the man was engaged in some clandestine, underhand behaviour, and with his connection to the Hospitallers and to Prince Cem there was too little probability of coincidence for Skiouros to ignore it.

  His eyes worked their way across the crowd and came back to his target after they had already disregarded him once. The man had hoisted a hood over his white-blond hair and had been looking away on the last pass of Skiouros’ gaze. But on a return journey, the man had turned and his golden face fuzz and hooked nose caught the Greek’s attention. The man was wearing the nondescript tan doublet and hose of an ordinary mercenary with an equally ordinary cloak over the top, a plain blade with a finger ring and knuckle guard sheathed at his side. Nothing marked him out as one of the Order except Skiouros’ memory.

  The man was over by the curtain wall, close to the rear left bastion. Even as Skiouros focused on him, he turned back to the wall and worked feverishly at something unseen, hidden by the hooded cloak he wore over his doublet. Carefully, Skiouros noted the man’s exact location, using the decorative sections of masonry above and counting the merlons in the battlements from the far bastion to be sure. After all, when he climbed down he would be too short to…

  His world blurred as his foot was pulled from the stirrup, hauled back by force, tearing his fingers from the pommel. He hit the flagged floor hard and it took a moment for him to orient himself before looking up into the angry face of a man in a breastplate and articulated arm pieces, a steel gorget lifting his chin to a haughty angle, his torso covered with a surcoat of blue bearing a white eagle.

  ‘My lord,’ Skiouros said with urgent respect, inclining his head.

  ‘Troublesome peasants who do not know their place and lay hand upon their betters’ possessions are looking for an early opportunity to face God for their sins. What have you to say, dog?’

  Skiouros took a steadying breath, aware that he was no longer watching the Hospitaller and that time was passing by.

  ‘Answer the lord d’Este,’ barked a man at his shoulder, presumably a squire or herald for the lord. Skiouros remembered the name from one of Orsini’s many lessons on the interminable warring families of Italy. The Este. Currently one of the few great families still throwing their weight behind the Borgia Pope. Only, in Orsini’s opinion, because they had calculated the favour they would win should Borgia survive this crisis and were willing to place a fat pile of coins upon a single roll of the dice - not from honour or loyalty.

  ‘My lord, I meant no offence,’ Skiouros said with respect and care. ‘I found myself separated from my lord Orsini and my height denied me an opportunity to locate him.’

  ‘So you thought to stand on Pegaso? It surprises me not that a double-faced, untrustworthy and impious animal like an Orsini would take such a creature into his service. It only worries me that you could be the best he has and that I might find myself standing close to you when Charles of Valois begins to pound our walls. When the time comes, boy, try not to piss on my boots or accidentally stick my page with your blade.’

  Skiouros fought the almost irresistible urge to knock this pompous arrogant dunghead onto his backside and, teeth gritted, kept his head politely inclined.

  ‘Be off with you boy,’ d’Este sneered. ‘Find your master and tell him to keep his pets under better control.’

  As Skiouros stood, bowed sharply and turned in the direction of his quarry at the wall, lord d’Este made a quick move to cuff him around the ear but missed, the young Greek fast and agile, disappearing between two groups of teamsters.

  A moment later, Skiouros reached the wall and his heart sank as he realised his prey had vanished. A quick look up confirmed he was at the correct position, and he shuffled two merlons along the wall to be in exactly the place the incognito Hospitaller had been. Nothing. Not a thing marked the man’s position. With a quick jump, Skiouros tried to scan the crowd, but there was no sign and nothing for him to stand on.

  He reached up to an iron bracket, newly placed to help a recent wall repair solidify and used it to haul himself up long enough to quickly glance left and right. Still no sign. The man was gone. With a sigh of irritation, Skiouros caught sight of Orsini and Sir Antonio on the wall top by the bastion, rapidly approaching his position. He would have to head to the steps any moment if he was to
return to the group seamlessly. He was out of time and had had lost the man.

  With a final thought, he turned to the part of the wall where the Hospitaller had been working and peered closely. Curiously, one section of the recently-strengthened wall - around four different bricks - had clean, white, new mortar, of which a small section had been chipped and scraped away, possibly with a small blade. Two bricks further along the mortar had been wetted with something and appeared to have corroded, eaten back into the bricks where it still frothed like a foamy wave. Skiouros was about to reach out to it when it struck him what a monumentally stupid move that could be and he stayed his hand.

  The sound of Sir Antonio almost above him, exchanging conversational fragments with Orsini, made him leap back into action. With a last glimpse at the mortar, he began to push through the press of men, staying close to the wall to keep hidden from those walking along the top of it, and made for the stairs. Arriving at the ascent just as the voices reached the top, he ducked back into the shadow and watched as the Catalan knight led Orsini and his men back down to the ambulatory.

  ‘Come, now, and I will lead you to your quarters,’ Sir Antonio said, walking past the skulking figure of Skiouros. ‘Once you are settled in and all this fuss has died away, one of the castle’s clerks will drop by and give you a schedule of duties. I will call in from time to time as my own responsibilities require. Make the most of this lull. When the French get here in a few months, this will seem like balmy halcyon days past.’

  Orsini nodded his agreement and gave Skiouros a curious look as the Greek fell in with the group easily. Dropping back only slightly, so as not to lose the knight in the press, Orsini leaned towards Skiouros. ’Well?’

  ‘Found him. I don’t know what he’s up to but it’s not good. What eats mortar?’

  Orsini frowned in surprise. ‘I’m not sure. Aqua Regia, perhaps? I’ve heard of it being used for similar purposes as well as melting precious metals. I don’t think I like the sound of this.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Skiouros sighed. ‘I lost the man again, thanks to a pompous idiot called Este. What the man’s up to is beyond me, as is how it might be connected with Cem.’

  ‘I think we had best keep our eyes very wide open during our sojourn in this place,’ Orsini murmured as they passed through a doorway and into the bustling corridors of the structure. ‘Very wide open.’

  Despite the change of venue, little changed in Skiouros’ life over the following weeks, a routine of guard duties, exercise and training, patrols and the like falling into place as they came to learn the ways of the castle and its officers. Perhaps once a week, some task took them into the lower levels of the castle’s main keep, but brought him no closer to the hidden Turkish hostage than that. The main ancient section of the huge cylinder with the weathered stone face was a solid mass containing a wide entry hall now used as a guard room, and a sloping passage that curved up the outer edge and then passed into a last guard chamber before emerging out onto the modern, upper section with the papal apartments, courtyards and halls. No one but the Catalan guards and the officials serving His Holiness or the Castle’s seneschal passed that higher guard room.

  Sagging in the knowledge that he was nearer to Cem than ever, but looked like getting no closer than this, Skiouros had instead set himself the task of investigating the elusive and secretive Hospitaller, but rather than relieving the frustration of his main task, his continued failure to locate the clandestine warrior drove him ever further into vexation. Not once in the ensuing nine weeks did he even lay eyes upon the man. He eventually came to the inescapable conclusion that the Hospitaller had left the castle that same day Skiouros had spotted him. Surely he had not penetrated the upper layers of the castle keep, given how his Order were under Papal command to absent themselves from Rome? And Skiouros had scoured the rest of the castle time and again to no avail. The man had vanished. Every few days, the Greek checked that portion of wall too, but nothing had changed there. He had even scanned all the other visible wall sections of the complex and found nothing.

  Nothing. That was the theme of his time in the castle.

  Or at least, it had been until December came calling with its cold winds, the intermittent bone-chilling rain lashing the battlements, and ever-deepening troubles.

  The continued blockade of Papal sea transport, with Ostia in French hands, combined with the unwillingness of local lords to supply Rome with food while themselves faced with potential sieges, had led to a rapid diminishing of the city’s stores. Food had become rationed on the first of the month, a number of units of regular soldiers and condottieri alike being rotated in the unenviable task of controlling the distribution of rations to the people. Skiouros had noted on the only time he had been seconded to such a duty how few of the city’s population seemed to be classed as ‘people’ where supplies were concerned. The poor and the homeless had to make do somehow with eating fresh air and drinking rainwater. Those who owed fealty to a patron relied upon their master to provide. It was a Hellish situation, further enforcing Skiouros’ extremely negative opinion of Italy in general and Rome in particular. Though no such siege had yet struck Istanbul since the Turk had taken control there, when the day came for the French crusade, Skiouros simply could not imagine Sultan Bayezid the Second unfairly restricting rations by class. Every day in this accursed place heightened his urge to return home and had it not been for his vow and the knowledge that he had to lay the spectre of his brother to rest, he would have been there some time ago.

  There would be no leaving Rome now, though.

  The gates in the walls of the borgo had been blocked and sealed tight, the walls garrisoned along their length and every weak point strengthened, the few cannon at the Vatican’s command run out to face the surrounding countryside to the north.

  Disaffection within the city had begun to become rather vocal. Even those under Papal protection in the strong borgo were hungry and starting to feel trapped. Those in the main bulk of the city across the river were virtually undefended, with just a few militia to hand and a couple of roving patrols from the Papal armies, their walls all but offered to the enemy in order to strengthen the defences of the borgo.

  The last supply wagon reached the city on the third of the month, having raced there from the only accessible local port at Civitavecchia just as the French army had swarmed in and secured it against the Pope. Things were beginning to look more desperate by the day.

  Then the news came that the Orsini family had thrown in their lot with King Charles. That particular unwelcome morsel had made Skiouros’ friend unapproachable for a day or two as he ranted and raged about his family’s lack of honour and foresight. He only began to subside after he had been drawn into the Pope’s presence, along with Cardinal Borgia, and questioned somewhat strong-handedly, being forced to swear a new, hard oath in light of his family’s betrayal. In addition to Cesare’s continued service, one pleasant piece of news emerged from the questioning. Apparently the only other Orsini in Lazio who had remained loyal to the Papacy was the erstwhile troublemaker Romano, and in response Cardinal Borgia had released young Paolo from his captivity and returned him to his father. Small consolation, but consolation nonetheless.

  And then one morning, as the icy rain lashed the battlements of the castle, a shout had gone up when a lookout spied movement. Within half a day the horizon to the north and west, and hemmed in to the east by the river, had become black with the swarming figures of men, horses, cannon and wagons.

  The French had arrived.

  By the evening of the twenty third day of December in the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and ninety four, the world of Pope Alexander the Sixth had shrunk to encompass the borgo and the city of Rome - all his seaports in French hands, and all the local lords either siding with the French or overwhelmed by them. It seemed as though Charles’ boast that he would pass Christmas in Rome was destined to come to pass.

  Then, yesterday, things had come to a head in the city across th
e river to the south. Despite the fact that the French forces presented little threat there, the bulk of their enormous army lying to the north of the Pope’s private domain, the starvation and panic had built to untenable levels and when one of the Papal patrols had been forced to push a starving man back from their number, a small riot had broken out, which had led to the death and mutilation of six Vatican soldiers and to the four survivors fleeing back across the river under a hail of makeshift missiles. It was said that the Pope spent most of his time now in solitary seclusion in the chapel atop the castle, praying to a somewhat indifferent God for their deliverance.

  His cardinals had urged him to come to terms, and that was common knowledge. Even his own son, Cesare Borgia, had agreed that there was now no alternative; that if a day or two more passed as things were, the people of Rome would rise up against their Pope and assault the borgo from the city itself. The army might hold for days or even weeks against the French, but not with the people of Rome ravaging their rear.

  The Pope had lost. It was that simple. Plain truth that all could now see.

  Skiouros leaned on the battlements, peering into the array of cannons lined up facing the castle, ready to thunder death and destruction at a word. And yet Charles had held off. It was tempting to think that perhaps he still held enough respect for the Pope for this to end well, or that he had no wish to pulverise the glory that was Rome, filled with innocents. But, as Orsini had clarified in his matter of fact manner, Charles would not flatten the castle with his cannon, since he knew Cem was held within, and his war against the Turk relied heavily upon his securing the usurper Sultan as his living banner.

  ‘We should be ready,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh?’ queried Orsini next to him. ‘How so?’

  ‘Something is about to happen. It has to. And whatever it is, it likely means that prince Cem will be moved. As he leaves that great doorway to the keep may well be the only reasonable chance I will ever get. If he is to be given over to the French, it will most certainly be the last.’