by Terry Jones
The laughter from below was not happy laugher. It was the sort of laughter that spelled trouble. And, from the sound of it, whatever that trouble was, it involved more than one intruder.
‘If I go down the stairs I’ll walk into the thick of it,’ thought Tom, ‘Better to approach from the outside. I might even get a chance to see what I’m up against.’ For he knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he was up against something.
Hastily he scrambled into the old man’s clothes, and grabbed his sword. There was no window, so he cut out a square of thatch with his sword and pushed it upwards. Mice and birds, whose place of residence the thatch had been for many years, protested and scuttled from their homes as Tom lifted himself up through the roof and dropped quietly down to the ground.
That is to say, the dropping was quiet, but the landing, unfortunately, was not. Glancing down, Tom had thought he would be falling onto a muck heap up against the house.
‘Odd place to have a muck heap,’ he’d thought, but was then too busy doing the dropping to take the thought any further. It was only as his feet went clear through what turned out to be a roof, and as the chorus of grunting and squealing instantly hit deafening level, that he realised he had, in fact, dropped straight into the pigsty.
The noise that his silent getaway created was almost gratifyingly loud. ‘It’s loud enough to be heard back in England,’ he thought. And he couldn’t prevent a stupid question occupying his mind when it should have been thinking about other things: if he could get these pigs to squeal a message home to England for him – to Katie and Old Molly Christmas – what would he have them squeal?
‘Help!’ was the first word that came to mind, for from round the corner of the house three men had just appeared. They were holding swords and grinning in a rather stupid sort of way as they approached the pigsty.
‘Well! Well! Well!’ said one of them in a thick accent that Tom found quite difficult to understand. ‘What a fine little piglet we’ve got here, boys! Whassay we roast him nice ’n crisp?’ The difficulty of the accent was compounded, Tom suddenly realised, by the fact that the man was slurring his words.
‘There’s plenty of crackling on him!’ said another, swaying just ever so slightly from side to side.
‘They’re drunk,’ thought Tom. ‘That’ll even things up a bit!’
Tom didn’t move. He crouched with his back to the wall and watched the three men closely.
‘One of them is going to make a lunge,’ he told himself. ‘The one on the right I think . . . yes . . . I bet he’s the one who’s going to go first . . .’
‘Well, well,’ said the man on the left. ‘Three against one . . . now that just ain’t fair, is it?’
‘No,’ said Tom quietly. ‘It’s three against three.’ And he suddenly kicked out with his right leg, so that the door of the pigsty flew open and the great sow, who all this time had been squealing and turning round and round in circles, now leapt away, bowling over the attacker to the right. At the same time, Tom kicked down the left-hand wall of the sty and the old boar charged at the other two men. Meanwhile Tom lunged at the one who been knocked over by the sow, thrusting his sword right through his ribcage and pinning him to the ground.
Then he grabbed the man’s sword and swung it across the assailant to the far left, slashing his forehead so the blood streamed down over his eyes, instantly blinding him in a hot stream. The man cursed, and, dropping his sword, clutched his face with both hands.
The man in the centre, who seemed to have consumed the largest share of whatever it was they had been drinking, lunged forward at Tom, but misjudged his thrust. It was a simple matter for Tom to slice clean through the man’s sword arm and then through his right leg, so the man pitched forward with a cry of outrage and fell head first into the sty.
Before the man had managed to utter another curse, Tom had stabbed the sword into his back and out again so the air in his lungs rushed out sounding like a gasp from hell, and Tom had turned to the man still trying to wipe the blood from his eyes. A second later, to the man’s unutterable surprise, his hand suddenly no longer encountered any head . . . it was rolling on the ground and he himself was toppling soundlessly backwards onto the pigsty floor.
Tom leaned back up against the wall, panting, the blood rushing round his brain and body.
It had taken so little time. One moment there had been three mocking men standing there, full of drink and malice. The next, there were three corpses.
Back in the days about which he had just been dreaming, the young Tom would have hesitated. He would have wondered who these men were. He would have wanted to ask why they were attacking him . . . if indeed that was what they were about to do. But fifteen years of action had taught Sir Thomas English not to ask such questions.
But nothing, thought Tom, took away this terribleness . . . this sickness that increasingly came upon him . . . this realisation that he had just taken away that which could not be replaced . . . turned life into non-life . . . fire into non-fire . . .
Tom shut his eyes and breathed deeply. So fast. He had become so fast. The men had been drunk, of course, but he had done it all so fast that even he had not had time to realise what he was doing. He had become a killing machine.
He staggered over to a full water butt that stood beside the house and peered down into the surface. There was his face. The same face he had looked at countless times, and that now looked no different. But, he thought deep inside himself, he knew it was the face of someone different. This couldn’t really be him – this man who took the lives of others so quickly and with such authority; who asked no questions, who acted with economy and consummate skill, and – in the heat of the moment – without pity.
When he entered the house, he found the fire had returned to its former pathetic state. Without saying anything, Tom lifted the girl, Niccola, up from the floor and laid her down on her bed. He then fetched a bowl of water from the butt and washed her face and shoulders. Then he threw some more sticks on the fire and warmed up the porridge that was to make their breakfast.
‘I was told there were bandits around Lodi,’ he said, as he watched her eat. ‘At least there are three fewer now.’ Maybe the words were an attempt to reassure himself about what he had just done, but they provided as little comfort as yesterday’s fire provided warmth.
Niccola looked up at him. ‘Why is there so much evil in this world?’ she asked. It was as if she expected Tom to come up with the definitive answer then and there . . . as if she expected him to know . . . as if he weren’t part of the evil himself . . .
‘The churchmen will say we brought it upon ourselves . . . when Adam took the apple from Eve . . .’ Tom felt he had to attempt some sort of response, but the girl snorted.
‘The churchmen blame everybody but themselves. They live in luxury and ease while they incite men to kill other men. That was never God’s intention.’
Tom fell silent. This uneducated girl, who’d lived out here on the edge of a canal alone with her poor father and had been engaged to marry the lame, wall-eyed fisherman from the village, how did she see so much? Was it those grey-green eyes of hers that allowed her to see through the sham of the world so clearly?
And then it was that Tom realised who she reminded him of . . . the smile that never left the corners of her mouth, even when she was frowning . . .
‘What are you looking at?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Tom, looking away. ‘I was just remembering someone.’
Chapter 8
Pavia 1385
Tom paused as he caught his first sight of Pavia. It lay straight across the horizon, blotting out any view of the future. It was literally where his road ended. That distant line of wall also marked the limit of his escape from the Visconti web. He would get no further.
The previous day, he and the girl had stripped the dead brigands of their arms and clothing and buried the bodies on the other side of the canal.
He had then ridden with Niccol
a into the town of Lodi, and there, in the harsh sunlight that had replaced the rain, they had sold the bandits’ gear and horses, bargaining with strangers in front of the great cathedral that dominated the Piazza Maggiore.
The men may have been bandits, and their horses and harnesses as like as not all stolen, but such things still fetch a good price. Tom could tell that the girl had never seen so much money in her life. She probably had no idea that so many soldi and golden florins could possibly exist all together in one place at one time.
For a moment he envied her the simplicity of the life she must have led with her father in that house beside the canal.
‘You owe me only for the wood and the food,’ said Niccola as Tom pressed the money into her hands. But Tom had kept her hands around the money.
‘From now on, you can burn your fire as you want,’ he said.
Niccola looked at him, with that frank gaze of hers.
‘Will you ever come back to me?’ she asked simply.
Tom shook his head: ‘I don’t know . . .’
She stepped towards him and put her hand around his neck and kissed him on the mouth – but as you might kiss a holy relic or a bishop’s ring. Then she turned and was lost in the market crowd.
But that was yesterday and might as well have happened in a previous life. Today, Tom was currently staring at the walls of Pavia, trying to work out what it was that he found so disturbing about them, for there was definitely something very odd . . . something wrong . . . something missing perhaps . . . but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
He had arrived at a corner of the city wall, which was high and a rosy red. It did not seem to be crenellated. Maybe that was what was disturbing him? No . . . there was something else . . .
A feeling of foreboding started to creep up Tom’s legs, like wading into a cold pond . . . if his first view of Pavia was so disconcerting, what on earth was it going to be like living there? What’s more – living there as a spy? He hardly dared think about it.
The gatekeeper, however, was reassuringly surly. He examined Tom’s papers as if they held a clue to the secrets of the universe. ‘I hope he lets me in on whatever the secret is,’ thought Tom to himself.
The gatekeeper scowled . . . ‘Uh oh!’ thought Tom, ‘Regina della Scala’s scribes must’ve slipped up!’ Tom started to look around for the nearest escape route, but then realised that the man was scowling because he could find nothing wrong with the papers.
He tried to make up for it by looking Tom over, from head to foot, with such distaste that if Tom could have borrowed another body, he undoubtedly would have. ‘Maybe it’s just the clothes,’ thought Tom. ‘I knew I should have worn the bright pink.’
And then suddenly the man was grunting with some incalculable pain – his frame was wracked with agony that forced the groans and gasps from his throat . . . or could it possibly be that he was speaking?
‘I’m sorry?’ said Tom. ‘I didn’t catch what you said?’
‘You should’ve gone to the other gate,’ growled the gatekeeper’s voice – as if it were coming from his entrails.
‘Oh,’ said Tom. But before he could wonder what the man meant, he was nodded through, and he found himself riding into the realm of Gian Galeazzo . . . the famous city of Pavia . . .
Except that there wasn’t any city there.
Suddenly Tom realised what it was that had been so odd about the view of the city walls; what had been missing was the sight of church spires, a dome, perhaps, and tall towers, and now the reason became clear. There were no spires or domes or towers because there were no churches or, indeed, buildings of any sort whatsoever – except for that shepherd’s hut over there beside the wood.
Otherwise the city of Pavia appeared to consist of nothing but gently rolling fields, dotted with groves and copses. There were plenty of trees and bushes and flowers but no people . . . oh, except for an old man ploughing a field over towards the wood.
‘For a great city this place could do with a bit more town,’ Tom muttered, as his horse made its way under a line of elm trees that bordered the main path. And then he heard the first blast of the horn and the thunder of hooves and the baying of hounds.
The old man threw his plough down, and ran away as fast as his wobbly legs could carry him. The oxen stood in their traces, and looked round at him as if to say: ‘Hey! What about us?’
The next moment, a wild boar burst out of a thicket and charged across the field, with hounds baying and snapping about its ears, blood pouring from its already torn flesh. As it reached the field its hooves sank into the newly ploughed earth, and the hounds took their chance. Some leapt at the boar’s throat, while others buried their teeth in its flanks, and the rest yelped and bayed – one or two turning round and around trying to bite their own tails in the frenzy.
The next moment the hunt itself appeared, and the field was churned up by the hooves of the horses and the feet of the men, who ran brandishing their pikes and yelling and blowing horns, every bit as excited as the dogs.
But there was one figure there who did not seem to be excited at all.
And quite a remarkable figure he was. He was dressed in a gown of blue and silver, and wore a silver collar round his neck. But the most remarkable thing about him was that he wasn’t carrying a sword or a spear, or anything that he could have used for hunting. What he was carrying was the most beautiful lady sitting behind him, on the crupper.
By now, the huntsmen were calling off the dogs, while two horsemen prodded the boar with their swords, as if to see how much life it had left in it. The answer was not much, so they slid their swords into the creature like two King Arthurs returning their Excaliburs into the rock.
The boar was gutted and the offal thrown to the dogs. The carcass was then hoisted onto a pole and the whole hunt began to move away from the blood-splashed furrows, down across a sward of grass towards a shining lake.
As soon as they had gone, the ploughman emerged from his hiding place in the wood and stared at the careful furrows – now heedlessly churned up and broken down. But he didn’t shrug his shoulders in despair or sigh, or lean heavily against a tree. He didn’t even raise his eyes to heaven. He simply stood there for a moment and then walked back to the plough, and took up where he’d left off.
‘As mundane as that!’ thought Tom. Like death on the battlefield.
He wheeled his horse round and followed the hunt.
The Captain of the Guard, accompanying the hunt, was as reassuringly surly as the gatekeeper. ‘They’re busy,’ he said. ‘They won’t want to be interrupted.’
‘I am the Lord Gian Galeazzo’s guest,’ said Tom. Apparently that is what his papers said he was, although how he was going to carry it off Tom had no idea. ‘I mean, the moment I show these papers to Gian Galeazzo himself, he’s bound to say: “Well, who invited you? I never did!”’
And now here he was. These were his papers. And there was nothing he could do about it . . . not if he were to have any chance of rescuing his squire, John.
The papers, however, seemed to work with the Captain of the Guard.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Pass on.’ And Tom made his way towards the courtiers who were now stretched out in their flower-embroidered robes on the flower-embroidered lakeshore.
The food had stilled the baying of the hounds. The horses had been led away by the grooms, and a buzz of civilised conversation and genteel laughter had descended over the lords and ladies of the hunt.
A table had been set up and covered with a chequered cloth, and a whole forest of servants now appeared as if from nowhere, scurrying about to bring chairs and stools to the board, and pouring wine into silver goblets. The fire was already red and ready, and the cooks were sharpening their knives. It was all happening with the speed and precision of a well-rehearsed routine.
Gian Galeazzo was sitting at the table next to his lady companion, whose face was framed in a headdress that consisted of nothing but a thousand frills. Tom
kept his eye on the Master of Pavia, waiting for his opportunity. Eventually he accosted the great man’s steward and presented his credentials. ‘I am a guest of the Lord Gian Galeazzo,’ he said with as much conviction as he could muster. ‘May I speak to your master?’
The steward glanced through the papers and then nodded. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
Tom watched as Gian Galeazzo listened to his steward and then stared straight at Tom without apology. That was the prerogative of these great rulers, thought Tom. They do not need to bow the knee or avert the eye – it was almost their duty to show that the normal rules of politeness simply did not apply to them.
Tom, for his part, bowed and waited to see what would happen. Gian Galeazzo was frowning now . . . now he was shaking his head . . . ‘I never invited any “Sir Thomas Englishman” to anything!’ That’s what he’d be saying. No! He was ordering more food . . . now he was speaking to his frilly companion . . . oh! Oh! Now he was looking over towards Tom . . . this was it . . . was he about to call the guards? ‘Arrest the imposter!’
No! He was smiling! And now he was beckoning to Tom.
‘Sir Thomas Englishman!’ called out the great Lord of Pavia. ‘Come! You are welcome. Sit and eat with us.’
Tom bowed gratefully. ‘Thank you, my lord. Pavia is indeed blessed with a wise and benevolent lord.’
‘So she is,’ agreed the wise and benevolent lord. ‘She is lucky, for he is very wise and very benevolent indeed.’
The arrogance left Tom almost speechless, but he managed to stutter: ‘I am very much indebted to you,’ said Tom.
‘For what?’ asked the great man. Alarm bells started to ring in Tom’s head.
‘For having me here as your guest,’ he vaguely gestured towards the papers, which the steward still held in his hands.
‘But . . .’ said the wise and benevolent ruler of Pavia, and the alarm bells became deafening . . . ‘I didn’t invite you here,’ he said.
