The Tyrant and the Squire

by Terry Jones

  So the encounter was exactly as Tom had predicted it would be. Gian Galeazzo would now beckon a guard and Tom would be dragged away through the smirking faces of the court, to be strung up by his heels in the deepest dungeon and subjected to all the unspeakable things that they did down there in the dark, and that could scarcely be imagined in the light, airy rooms of the court above.

  ‘I didn’t invite you,’ Gian Galeazzo was repeating, with a hint of menace in his voice.

  ‘Forgive me, my lord.’ Tom had practised this answer many times in his head. ‘But I was given to understand that I had been invited here by you personally . . . of course I shall leave at once if that is not the case . . .’

  ‘My name is Pesquino Capelli,’ said Gian Galeazzo.

  For a brief moment, Tom thought: ‘Typical Visconti! They’re so devious they can’t even admit who they are . . .’

  ‘You won’t catch my Lord Gian Galeazzo out hunting!’ continued Pesquino Capelli. ‘He is more careful of his person.’

  ‘Then he should take more care of his knees,’ smiled the be-frilled companion. ‘He is in danger of wearing them out!’

  This caused a good deal of laughter round the table, and, although the point of the joke was not clear to Tom, the moment did give him the chance to pick his wits up off the floor where they’d fallen.

  ‘My lord, please forgive the ignorance of a stranger,’ he murmured.

  ‘Why should you recognise someone you have never seen before?’ asked Pesquino Capelli. ‘However, since you have apologised we shall exact a penance – it shall be to sit here beside the Lady Bianca and myself and drink our health together.’

  And that is what Sir Thomas English did. He joined in the laughter and the feasting, but he never forgot that he was in the court of a Visconti lord, and that nothing was probably what it seemed it was. Moreover he kept reminding himself that he had made a classic error on his very first encounter in the court of Gian Galeazzo. If he were to survive the coming weeks, he would have to keep his wits sharp and his eyes open and never let down his guard.

  Chapter 9

  Pavia 1385

  The hunters were in an expansive mood as they made their way through the park back to the castle.

  ‘My Lord Gian Galeazzo seldom goes out of the castle these days,’ said the young man riding on Tom’s right. He was sporting an elaborate red headdress with a gold motif embroidered on the front, and had been drinking generously from the silver goblets.

  ‘Is he unwell?’ asked Tom.

  ‘No . . . he is just cautious . . .’ said the young man, dropping his voice. He too, it seemed, would prefer to be cautious, but unfortunately the wine had imbued him with an irresistible urge to err on the side of incaution.

  ‘Cautious of what?’ persisted Tom.

  The young man glanced around and dropped his voice so low that Tom thought the horses would trip over it.

  ‘He does not trust his uncle, Bernabò,’ whispered the youth, and then shook himself as if rid of a great secret. He started to whistle a tune that was popular just then.

  However, the news that Gian Galeazzo did not trust his uncle was scarcely news, Tom reflected. He had known all about that before he had set out for Pavia. Indeed it was the common talk of Milan how young Gian Galeazzo lived in daily fear that his uncle would poison him, or have him arrested or secretly murdered at any moment. And there were few that did not think that was a perfectly plausible scenario, even if they said the opposite.

  Certainly no one doubted that Bernabò had eyes on Gian Galeazzo’s half of the Visconti dominions. It would be a pleasant thing to be able to add that half to his own when the time came to divide the state between his five sons.

  Ricardo, which was the young man’s name, seemed to be so hell-bent on imparting forbidden information to Tom that he kept leaning across and almost toppling from his horse as he did so. At this moment he caught Tom’s sleeve – more as a means of preventing himself hitting the ground than of attracting Tom’s attention.

  ‘It’s embarrassing,’ confided Ricardo. Tom was just about to ask him what was embarrassing, when they passed once more through some city gates, and once again, instead of houses and shops, Tom found himself surrounded by yet more bucolic countryside.

  ‘You see?’ exclaimed Ricardo.

  ‘Not really,’ replied Tom.

  ‘Walls!’ said Ricardo, rather more loudly than he intended. He lowered his voice. ‘He’s put walls around the entire hunting ground . . .’ and at this point his voice became a hissing whisper ‘It’s all because he’s afraid!’

  ‘Gian Galeazzo?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Sh!’ whispered Ricardo fiercely and extremely loudly. ‘I’m not saying who I’m talking about . . . but look around you . . . Is someone who’s afraid to hunt in the open country a man fit to rule a city like Pavia?’

  ‘But where is the city?’ asked Tom.

  ‘We’ll be there soon,’ said Ricardo, and even as he spoke, Tom could see yet another wall looming up ahead of them, and this time he could also see spires and towers, peering up and waving at him from over the wall.

  The castle of Gian Galeazzo formed part of the walls of the city of Pavia. The whole was surrounded by a good-sized moat, and the hunters were only allowed to pass over the drawbridge after a thorough inspection of their papers.

  ‘I mean, can you believe it?’ Ricardo was seething. ‘We can’t even go hunting without our papers, we can’t go anywhere . . . he’s spying on us all the time!’

  Tom winced at the mention of spying, but he managed to inquire innocently: ‘He employs a lot of spies, does he?’

  Ricardo had suddenly produced a flagon of wine from the folds of his rich vestments, and now took a long swig from it, before handing it to Tom.

  ‘Thick as cockroaches . . .’ he whispered. ‘You can’t move without treading on them!’ The far-from-humorous laugh which followed this observation was accompanied by an irritated gesture that Tom took to mean that he should hurry up and drink so he could pass the flagon back. Tom put it to his lips and took a long slug – at least he pretended to, for in truth he didn’t want to be fogged by wine; his first few hours as a spy might prove to be the most dangerous he would ever have to live through. He handed the precious object back to its anxious owner.

  Where the Porta Nuova di Milano opens onto the narrow streets of the city, there was, in those days, a small apothecary’s shop – almost a lean-to, built against another building of brick. A man dressed in particoloured hose, who might have been a servant or a squire, was gazing into a small phial that the apothecary was holding, while the apothecary was explaining something in great detail. As the hunt approached, the two of them glanced up quickly and moved inside as if at a pre-arranged signal . . .

  It was such a well-rehearsed movement that Tom couldn’t help speculating about what the two were doing. Perhaps some great lord wished to rid himself of an unloved spouse? Or perhaps his mistress hoped to remove a rival in love? Or, and this may have been the most likely scenario, the scion of a powerful house wished to eliminate a rival to his inheritance?

  On the other hand, of course, it could just have been indigestion powder that was being handed over, but somehow in the scheming cities under the Visconti yoke, poison seemed as likely a purchase as camomile and rhubarb.

  As the boisterous party of hunters moved down the street, the equally boisterous town dogs began barking at the hunters’ hounds, and the hounds whined and looked up at their masters as if pleading to be let loose on those low-class mongrels.

  At this moment the hunt rounded a corner and for the first time Tom saw the castle of Gian Galeazzo. The sound of his jaw hitting the road would have startled the finches from the trees if there had been any.

  The castello was red, which was pretty extraordinary. It was bright red, which was also pretty extraordinary. And it was immense, which was not necessarily so extraordinary, but for one factor: it didn’t look like any other immense building that Tom ha
d ever seen.

  Immense buildings generally fell into one of two categories: castle or cathedral, but the castello of Pavia fell into neither. Houses were houses – some bigger than others, but once a building passed a certain size it was either dedicated to worship or dedicated to war. Soaring spires and elaborately decorated windows or crenellations and arrow slits, drawbridges and massive walls. You could not mistake a cathedral for a castle or vice versa, and most certainly you could not mistake either for a house.

  But the castello of the Visconti was built on a scale so immense that it most certainly could not be a house. And yet nor had it been built for either war or worship . . . unless you were talking about worship of the Visconti dynasty. No! The building was clearly built as a residence, and that was what was so extraordinary about it.

  It was three storeys high, with row after row of windows – but not the sort of windows you get in churches, with coloured glass and bright patterns. Nor were they the sort of windows you got in most houses, which tended to be square openings in the brickwork, with a couple of wooden shutters to close them off. These windows had glass in them – but glass that you could see through! And there were so many windows: it was a building that wanted to view the world without feeling it; a safe place from which the observer could watch the storms and tempests outside those protective walls, without a single hair being blown out of place.

  As if to reinforce the notion of security, each corner of the house was guarded by a tower, and around the whole edifice ran a moat, across which a single drawbridge gave the only access to the town.

  It was the sort of building that must have intimidated other buildings, for not a single other construction had dared to intrude on the grand vista offered by the façade of the castello. The shops and houses of the town hung back in awe of the power and wealth of the man who lived in such a house, and whose hair would never be blown out of place because of the glass in the windows.

  As Tom gazed over the vast structure, something in one of the windows caught his eye. It was a figure . . . a woman, standing at the window watching the returning hunt, and who stepped back into the shadows as soon as she saw Tom look up at her.

  But there was no more time to think. The column of hunters were peeling off now for the stables; some were dismounting at the main doors to the castello, and Tom had to begin his new life as a spy . . .

  He sighed. It had all been so much simpler when he and Ann and Emily had made their way across France in the wake of the English army, back in the old days. And yet it hadn’t seemed that simple at the time . . .

  Chapter 10

  Marvejols 1361

  Emily had been behaving in a very peculiar way ever since they’d left Avignon. And today, as they made their way out of the town of Mende, she had grabbed hold of Tom’s arm as they were crossing the narrow packhorse bridge across the river Lot – and she still had hold of it by the time the half-built cathedral of Mende had disappeared behind them in the morning haze.

  In one way, Tom was only too happy to have the beautiful Emily holding tightly onto him just as a lady should hang onto her knight. On the other hand she kept leaning on him and that threw his balance out. And when you take into account the fact that he was already carrying her huge bundle of clothes, you can see the problem he was having in walking straight.

  ‘It’s an odd thing,’ thought Tom, ‘how when you wear clothes they don’t seem to weigh anything, but as soon as you try to carry them – they’re lead weights!’

  Ann, on the other hand, was now fully into her role of Alan the Jaunty Squire, and she was striding off ahead without a backward glance.

  For some miles they followed the river, but by the time they came to turn their steps up into the hills, Tom decided that he had been chivalrous enough for one day.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, finally shaking Emily off, ‘I just can’t walk like that – with you leaning on me.’

  ‘All right!’ said Emily. ‘Go ahead and join your friend. I’m sure you’ll be much happier with her.’

  Unable to think of a suitably chivalrous retort that would at the same time express his feelings, Tom didn’t reply, and the pair toiled on in silence, watching Ann’s figure as it diminished in the jumping haze of the day’s rising heat. Eventually she disappeared altogether, and once again, Tom felt Emily clinging onto him.

  ‘We ought to catch Ann up,’ said Tom. ‘The whole point was to stay together.’

  ‘Go ahead, if you’re so worried about her,’ said Emily.

  ‘No . . . let’s just you and I go a bit faster, and we’ll go faster if you don’t keep leaning on me.’

  ‘I can’t go another step,’ said Emily suddenly, and she sat down in the middle of the path.

  ‘Oh look, come on!’ said Tom. ‘We can’t afford to fall further behind.’

  ‘You go on ahead. Leave me here, if you want to,’ said Emily. ‘I’ve got to rest.’

  ‘But . . . but . . .’ What would the true knight in shining armour do in a situation like this? Tom wondered. But, as far as he could recall, the manuals of chivalry omitted to mention what the would-be knight errant should do if the object of his adoration sat down in the middle of the road and pretended to be a pig-headed, selfish brat.

  Not, of course, that Tom considered the beautiful Lady Emilia de Valois to be any of those things, you understand, but there was something about her behaviour that did not seem consistent with what he had heard in the popular romances.

  He would have to work out his own code of chivalry. So, after a moment of consideration, Tom threw the Lady Emily’s clothes down, strode over to her, grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her to her feet.

  ‘Now look here!’ he said. ‘I’m doing my best to help you. I don’t want to go to England. I don’t want to carry your clothes. But I’m doing it as a favour to you. So if you don’t try and do your bit to help, I’m just going to throw your clothes down into the ravine there and you can jolly well go and look after yourself.’

  He knew this was not really how a knight in shining armour should address the lady whom he loves and serves, but then, he wasn’t one – not yet anyway.

  Emily jerked herself upright, and her eyes went round as two bowls of cream with a plum in the middle of each. ‘You wouldn’t throw my clothes down there!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I would!’ said Tom – now forgetting any thoughts of gallantry.

  ‘You thief!’ shouted his companion, and – quite out of the blue – the gracious Lady Emilia de Valois punched Tom squarely on the nose. Again it was scarcely textbook behaviour for a true heroine of romance.

  ‘Ow!’ said Tom in a most un-knight-like voice.

  ‘You villain!’ screamed the beautiful and usually ladylike Emily. ‘You wretched turncoat!’

  ‘Look! I haven’t done anything!’ squealed Tom, still holding his nose. ‘I just said I would if you didn’t buck your ideas up!’

  ‘But how could you even say such a thing!’ demanded Emily.

  ‘It was a threat!’

  ‘Villain!’ And she punched him again on the nose, and because he wasn’t expecting it, she caught him another beauty and he squealed again.

  ‘Stop it!’ shouted Tom, and he caught hold of her arms. She struggled and wriggled but he held her firm. ‘Just follow me!’ he said. ‘And stop leaning on me!’

  And he picked up the bundle of clothes once more, and strode off after Ann without another backward glance at Emily. ‘If she wants her clothes,’ he said to himself, ‘she can jolly well keep up with them.’

  Ann was now so far ahead that Tom could not see her. And when he came to a fork in the path, he stood there for some moments in a state of ditheration (which was a word he’d just made up). At the same time he was thinking: ‘This is it! We’re going to lose each other! I know it!’

  It was then that he noticed a few twigs lying beside one of the paths. They weren’t particularly interesting twigs per se, Tom said to himself, but then there isn’t a lot that
a twig can do to make itself interesting per se. Except these twigs looked as if they just might have been arranged on the path by an absent-minded jackdaw with no particular artistic talent . . . and, if that is indeed what had happened, the artistically handicapped jackdaw might well have intended the arrangement of twigs to form an arrow.

  Of course! Tom reflected, Ann wouldn’t have left him without any indication of which path she’d taken. Tom took courage and boldly turned on to the right-hand path as Emily caught him up.

  ‘Oh look,’ she said brightly. ‘There’s a pile of twigs in the form of an arrow!’

  ‘I know,’ said Tom.

  ‘Oh,’ said Emily. ‘I just thought . . .’

  ‘Come on!’ said Tom.

  The path took them into a deep valley and at the same time turned itself into a stream – nothing much to write home about – but enough to slake their thirst and cool them off. They struggled along the stream for some way, towards a high flat-topped hill.

  ‘Are you sure this is the way?’ asked Emily at last.

  ‘You saw the arrow,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes,’ said Emily.

  ‘So?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Let’s keep going,’ said Tom making an effort to get back into chivalric spirit. ‘It’s getting to be dusk and if we can get up to the top of that hill we should see Marvejols any minute.’

  ‘Right,’ said Emily.

  They trudged on with the sun now long lost behind the surrounding hills. A chill of future darkness brushed against them and made them walk closer together. Eventually Tom took Emily’s hand in his, and Emily didn’t object. The tide of darkness was rising continually up the sides of the valley. Soon they would be drowning in it.

  The sky had clouded over some time ago and their way would be lit by neither moon nor stars. And now, in the failing light, the flat-topped hill, from which Tom hoped to see the next town, was beginning to look more like a mountain: a bare and pitiless mountain.

  Neither Tom nor Emily spoke. But their silence did not indicate a convergence of thought, as such silences so often do, especially in books. As it happens, Tom was wondering why he felt so annoyed with Ann for running off ahead like that. Of course she’d left him with the object of his affections . . . the lady whose hand he would one day win jousting against the other knights of Anjou and Burgundy, Brittany and Germany . . . and yet he’d felt irritated.