Helwyg nodded. ‘I fight here before. I know place. Old Roman place under church. Good hiding.’ The other three nodded their gratitude. Such a place might become necessary to save themselves in the next few days.
‘Look!’ Skiouros hissed at his friends, and they returned their attention to the gate.
Sultan Cem’s carriage, still shut up tight and with the drapes closed, followed on behind the royal party, eight Turks accompanying the carriage on horseback, the usual French soldiers surrounding them.
‘Why does he insist on being shut up in that carriage,’ Parmenio grumbled. ‘Before San Giovanni Campano he was riding a horse, while his whore rode in the carriage, but down here he’s all tightly sealed up with her.’
‘Wife,’ Skiouros corrected.
‘What?’
‘She’s not a whore. She’s one of his wives, sent from Cairo with his other attendants.’
Parmenio rounded on Skiouros. ‘Really? Everything that’s going on and you pick me up on something as negligible as his marital status?’
‘Perhaps he has no interest in the wars of the Italians?’ Orsini mused before the argument could begin in earnest. ‘Or perhaps he has irritated the king? Perhaps Charles fears he will become a clear target for Neapolitan marksmen? Whatever the case, I want to see him. We’ve only assumed him to be in the carriage since Teano; we’ve had no proof. What if we’ve been watching the wrong group?’
‘Surely not, with his Turk attendants here?’ Skiouros frowned.
‘Probably not. He’s almost certainly in there, but there has to be a reason for the change, and I wouldn’t put it past his Majesty to pull a trick like that. Charles is a devious one.’
‘Says an Orsini,’ grunted Parmenio.
Falling silent and watching carefully, the four men kept their eyes on the carriage as it moved into the square. ‘Be ready to move,’ Orsini said, downing the last of his wine. ‘We can’t afford to lose sight of it.’
The others followed suit, throwing the smooth local vintage down their necks and gathering their cloaks and purses, but Parmenio suddenly reached out a restraining arm and stopped Skiouros as he rose from the seat.
‘Wait,’ he hissed and then pointed at the coach. As they watched, the vehicle slowed on the far side of the piazza, outside the Castel Capuano’s door. The four relaxed back into their seats, watching tensely as the Turks dismounted and handed their reins to French serfs who ran over to help. Orsini grunted his irritation as the four realised that from this angle, the carriage’s occupants would enter the castle without once moving into view. The Turkish entourage and half a dozen French guards filed around the carriage and disappeared from sight. Orsini was actually growling with a sound akin to a cranky bear by the time the carriage jerked into life and rumbled off across the piazza, revealing only the last few of the French guards entering the building. To further irritate the observers, the ‘swan knight’ who had been standing nearby gestured to his men and the unit moved into the castle once more, leaving half a dozen soldiers outside, who moved to positions at the castle’s corners and doors to watch for trouble.
‘I think we have to assume that he was in the carriage,’ Skiouros shrugged.
Parmenio nodded. ‘And he’s well-protected.’
‘You have no idea, my friend,’ Orsini said darkly. ‘The swan crest was Louis de Valois, Duc d’Orleans and cousin of the king. He’s a veteran of the tourney, it’s said, and you can be sure that if he’s in there, then the soldiers protecting the place are among the best the French have to offer.’
‘Why after all this time assign someone so important as his jailor?’
‘I don’t know. Could be because the place is well-appointed. It used to be a royal residence, after all, so perhaps Louis chose it himself. Perhaps Charles only trusts his cousin with the Turk’s safety. Either way it all adds up to a more difficult proposition now. Come on.’
Without waiting for the others, Orsini rose and pushed his way between the busy tables back into the tavern building. Entering the dingy interior, filled with hanging smoked meats, the smell of garlic, wine and sweat and the noise of the few people taking advantage of the fact that the crowd had concentrated outside to grab a place at a good table, Orsini made for the stairs to the upper floor.
By the time Skiouros and the others had caught up with him, he was approaching their shared room that provided a reasonable view of the piazza and the castle and gate on opposite sides of it. Unlocking the door, he moved inside and to the window. The others followed, and the door clicked shut behind them.
‘Anything else we had to discuss, we needed a little privacy for,’ Orsini said, watching the building opposite and ignoring the cavalcade of Frenchmen passing beneath them and the endless serried ranks of foot soldiers pouring into the city.
‘We’re in trouble,’ Skiouros sighed. ‘Our last chance before he disappears into the heart of a holy war overseas, and they slam him up in a castle with a strong guard and the king’s own cousin. What the hell do we do now?’
Orsini shrugged. ‘We do what we can, what we’re good at. We watch. We wait. We practice the patience that you once told me was second nature to you now. Charles will be occupied for a day or two. He’ll have to establish control and a rapport with the remaining authorities in the city. Then he’ll have to send emissaries to Ferrante the Second in Ischia. And there are two castles to lay siege to. Even if he manages to rush things, his army will not be ready to leave on crusade for weeks.’
‘And if he decides to give Napoli to his men to loot and rape?’
‘Then we put Helwyg’s hiding place to the test and continue to practice patience.’
‘Do you really honestly believe we can do it?’ Skiouros asked, tentatively.
‘We stole into a palazzo in Rome and took a man’s son out from under his sleeping nose. We took the fortress of Roccabruna from an army with only a handful of men. We rescued Cardinal Borgia from a sealed town and a hostile French force and then dealt with their pursuit. And don’t forget that we escaped a Turkish slaver and survived a flight across a thousand miles of mountain and desert. Never underestimate our ability to achieve our goals, my friend. And bear in mind that while this is a castle, and with three score guards or more it’s a nicely modernised one with many wide windows and few external defences. Whatever the cost, we will do it, I pledge you that.’
Skiouros glanced around at the four of them. Whatever the cost… They had been seven when they left Genoa over a year earlier. His quest of vengeance had cost them Vicenzo, and Girolamo, and Nicolo. How many more would have to die before the usurper Sultan stood before God to answer for his crimes?
A mournful clanging across the chilled, darkened city announced the hour as two in the morning. Skiouros looked across at Parmenio, white frost forming on the man’s extremities - the weather had taken a cold turn yesterday. His friend, while not strictly speaking asleep, was close enough to dreamland that his eyes flickered constantly with the effort of keeping them open. Skiouros had been irritated at first, but they had had a long and tedious day, and he was having some trouble himself. Parmenio was almost two decades older than he, and had had an erratic sleep pattern since the death of his oldest friend. That he was wearier than Skiouros was hardly a surprise.
He glanced down at their chart, formed over the past two and a half days of watching from their window - it had to be from the window, with the ever-increasing presence of French patrols in the streets and the growing number of daily ‘incidents’ involving the deaths of Neapolitans. With two men always on the lookout in six hour shifts - Orsini had been immovable on the number, claiming that one man could too easily fall asleep, as was now being evidenced - they had watched each coming and going of guards and other folk from the castle and every tiny detail had been logged on the paper. A clear pattern had quickly emerged, just as Orsini had expected, given the military nature of the guard and jailors.
On cue, the door of the castle creaked open, a wide swathe of
golden light spreading across the rime-coated paving of the empty piazza, and six rested and refreshed guards emerged, moving around the building, their breath pluming in the night air. Each soldier nodded to the man he replaced before they went off duty, entering the building and closing the door once more.
‘Two of the clock and another guard change.’
‘Mmph? Eh?’ Parmenio queried, roused briefly from his semi-stupor and shivering awake again.
‘Two of the clock,’ Skiouros repeated. ‘They’ve changed the guard again, and I checked. They’re the same ones as earlier. I figure they must be being punished for something, what with the shifts they’re being given.’
Parmenio hauled himself a little more upright and peered through the window. He squinted for a moment and shrugged. ‘I can’t tell the difference, so I’ll take your word for that.’
‘The two men who stand at the east door and the southeast corner are fairly distinctive. The latter has a leg injury, so he lurches as he moves, and the other one has the thickest beard I’ve ever seen on a human being and seems to disappear into the shadows to drain his bladder every ten minutes. They were both on duty this afternoon and now again tonight, so I can only assume this whole unit has rotated on the same times. And the same thing happened yesterday. The men who do the ten in the evening ‘til two in the morning shift are the same ones as do the noon ‘til five shift.’
That’s still only nine hours,’ Parmenio sighed. ‘Whatever their pattern, that’s no reason to assume they’ll be tired. They still have two ‘til twelve to catch up on their sleep.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Skiouros disagreed. ‘I remember when Lykaion was on a similar rotation with the Janissaries and missed our meet-ups at the bloody church. Just because he was on duty during the night didn’t excuse him from being up at dawn with the others. The military is like that: they don’t bend to accommodate such things.’ He thought back with a sad smile. ‘Those particular days, Lykaion was more troublesome and disagreeable than ever, but he was also tired and much easier to outwit.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Parmenio rubbed his freezing arms.
‘I am. I’ll speak to Cesare when we change over. I think tomorrow night is the time to go, about one in the morning, when they’re at their most exhausted. And this corner is the obvious place to go for, since the bearded one at the door’s so often out of sight, away from his post.’
‘Has that lurker been back?’
Skiouros frowned for a moment, but shook his head. Two nights running, they had seen the shape of a man in a shabby brown cloak sitting in the freezing gutter over by the city gate. Almost certainly a beggar, since no one in their right mind was out in the streets these nights, and certainly not right beneath the French army’s nose like that. Let alone sitting in a frosty gutter. ‘No. Looks like he’s been moved on.’
‘Good. Then all that remains is to decide how we do it.’
Speculatively, Parmenio leaned to the window again, brushing furry white frost from the sill with his elbows as he peered down.
‘Hello, what’s this?’
Skiouros leaned forward to join him. Across the square, a small group of horsemen were making their way into the piazza. This was new. Foot soldiers were becoming common on every street corner, threatening the locals and taking advantage of the situation to rob and rape, but cavalry were a rare sight. The Greek squinted, trying to identify them. They were clearly French. Their blue, white and gold livery was visible even in the poor light. There were perhaps a score of them. What were they doing at this time of…
Skiouros shrank back from the window. ‘Shit!’
‘What is it?’ Parmenio frowned, trying to see what had perturbed his friend. Then he too recognised the king of France in his saddle at the centre of the group, his eyes widening.
‘What the fuck is Charles doing here in the middle of the night?’
‘Perhaps he’s come to see his cousin?’ Skiouros whispered. ‘The duke of Orleans rarely leaves the place, after all.’
‘Perhaps. But in the middle of a freezing night? It’s to be hoped he doesn’t decide to drop in for a chat when we happen to be over there!’
The two men watched tensely as the party tied up their horses outside the door under the watchful eye of the bearded guard with the bladder problem and entered the castle. ‘Shall we wake the others?’ Skiouros whispered.
‘Let them sleep. If anything else happens we’ll go and rouse them.’
The pair peered from the window in a state of near unbearable tension for perhaps fifteen minutes until the door opened again and the king and his soldiers emerged once more into the misty, freezing piazza, their boots skittering on the frosty flagstones, untying their horses, clambering into the saddle and riding off for the city centre.
‘I’m starting to think that our time’s running out faster than we anticipated,’ Skiouros breathed, and Parmenio nodded. ‘Tomorrow night, then. I’m with you. Let’s get it over with.’
Henri Baillet stood at the south-eastern corner of the Castel Capuano, nodding faintly. The only thing that was really keeping him awake was the ache in his leg - even the numbing cold was faintly soporific. Never a good horseman, Henri had been crestfallen to have been thrust into the saddle of some local’s disagreeable animal back in Velletri a month ago, and had barely made it out of the city gate before he’d been unhorsed and fallen painfully among the rocks by the road. Their task - to recapture the fleeing pope-son cardinal - had been urgent enough that his companions had ridden on at breakneck pace and left their fallen man behind, ignoring his absence.
It had been both a curse and a boon, his incompetence. He had returned to his commander, hobbling and leaning on a stick he found by the road. His commander had had him beaten for his failure and he had been assigned the worst shifts available for over a month now, with no relief in sight. But really… well everyone else who had ridden on had been killed at Albano by some force presumably lying in wait at the cardinal’s order. So really, he’d been a lucky man.
Of course, it would have been nice to be one of those men out in the streets, fleecing the local flock of their gold and ale. But his leg wouldn’t really have coped with a four hour patrol around the sloping streets of Napoli, anyway. Better to stand here, perhaps, after all.
Occasionally he wondered how badly wounded he would have to be before he would be assigned to the medical section, currently quartered in a nice, cosy commandeered convent in the quieter part of the city? Sadly, for all the aches and discomfort, his leg was definitely on the mend. That meant that once everything was settled in Napoli and the local scum had accepted French dominion, he would be accompanying the army overseas to the east, into the desert to fight the Turk for control of Byzantium. He sighed, remembering the tales - mostly horror stories - of those great crusades centuries back when men in steel pots and chain shirts had sweated out their lifeblood in the sands of Syria while Saracens carved pieces out of them for the greater glory of their deviant God.
His thoughts turned back to Marguerite at home in Laon. How old would their child be now? He was too tired to calculate the months he’d been away. He wondered whether it had been a boy or a girl? Hell, the way things were going, the child would be married and he’d be a grandfather before he climbed the hill toward the glorious, grand abbaye de Saint Martin and their home that nestled in the shadow of its great church.
Curse Italy. Curse the Turk. Curse Charles de Valois for his thirst for conquest. Curse the lot of them!
His eyes had drifted closed again, and he only realised because a thrill of pain shot up his leg from his ankle and jerked him back to his senses. He straightened, shivering and trying not to slump, and wiped the frost from his pike handle before reassuming his stance. He was periodically in view of that miserable hairy bastard Jehan de Courcy by the east door. Every time the sour old pisspot came back into view around the projecting entrance tower, he glared this way. Henri had no doubt in his mind that if Jehan once saw him
asleep he would report him to the officers, and then night-guard duty would be something to dream of by comparison.
He glanced, but de Courcy was out of sight - probably taking a leak behind the tower yet again. One more hour ‘til shift-change. Then he could get a few hours’ sleep before the miserable bastards in charge had him up and clearing the kitchens for breakfast. At least he wouldn’t have to deliver food to the Turk, anyway. He’d had to do that the first day, but then young Nicolas had turned up for morning inspection with unpolished boots and had been given that unpleasant, onerous task as a reward.
Where was de Courcy, for the love of God? Was he busy curling one out in the shadows? Or had he dragged one of the street-walking girls aside to entertain himself in the privacy of his dark, urine-soaked corner?
He realised his eyelids had drooped again as he came alert in a start, a strong arm around his throat, cutting off his air. His eyes bulged and he panicked as he realised that hands had also closed around both his wrists. He felt his pike plucked from his helpless grasp. More than one person held him, then. His rolling eyes caught strange, colourful tattoos on the arm around his neck, just on the periphery of his vision. He was going to suffocate soon, but blessedly at least he would pass out first. And the ache in his leg would stop hurting when he passed out, too.
A creature of nightmare suddenly stepped into view in front of him. His eyes boggled at the troll, the Nordic giant before him, his wild hair and scruffy blond beard twinkling with hoar frost. Dressed in dark doublet and hose and with a black wool cloak, the enormous, bearded blond monster had a face that displayed the clear and present threat of agonising violence. A voice behind Henri - the man with the tattooed arm, obviously - rattled something off in unintelligible Italian, and a second voice that belonged to the grip on his weapon arm replied in soft, well-spoken Italian. A third voice joined in from his other side. He had not a word of this liquid language, and the conversation was beyond his wits. He couldn’t even discern the tone they were using, but that might be less due to his incomprehension than to a combination of exhaustion and suffocation.
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