by Terry Jones
But would Ann have seen it like that?
And what would Ann have said about the letter which he had been given by the Lady Caterina? He ran it through in his mind, for he had been careful to memorise every word:
‘Sir Thomas,’ it had said. ‘Take care in my father’s court. Beware the man they call “Il Medecina” – he may seem to be your friend and may hint that he would be happy to see my father undone. But in truth my father has no more loyal servant, and Il Medecina is cunning and intelligent beyond the normal run of men.
‘Donnina de’ Porri is not to be trusted. She is totally devoted to my father, and does nothing but at his behest.
‘My father, as you know, is capricious and violent. Keep out of his way as much as is possible. Likewise his sons, Ludovico and Rodolfo; both are devious and untrustworthy no matter how they may present themselves to you.
‘If my Lord Gian Galeazzo has sent you to divine my father’s intentions towards him, the only person to whom you may speak with some safety is my mother, Regina della Scala. But take care. She, too, is loyal to my father and will never act to harm him. What is more she has no love for my Lord Gian Galeazzo. However, she loves me. She may be prepared to save him for my sake. It is not certain, but it is the best you can do.
‘Burn this letter the instant you have read it.
‘Caterina.’
It was not exactly a cheering letter, but at least it wasn’t asking him to act as a messenger between the Lady Caterina and some secret lover. And in addition it gave him some good advice . . . at least it seemed to.
There were, however, still two major problems. First, he would need to get Regina della Scala on her own, and she always seemed to be in the company of Donnina de’ Porri. Secondly, Regina had told him that Bernabò already suspected him of treachery. Of course, this might have just been to get Tom on side to do her bidding – but then Bernabò probably suspected everyone of treachery, and the likelihood was that she was right. In which case, Tom was running a considerable risk by showing his face back in the court in the first place.
Tom sighed. Why was nothing simple and straightforward in the land of the Visconti?
Tom’s horse agreed and snorted: ‘Those Visconti people . . . yeurghh!’ it said, although to you or me it might have sounded like a whinny.
Tom looked down at the animal. They had been together for many years now, and Tom knew the horse’s moods and feelings almost as well as the horse knew his. In fact, if the truth were known, Tom often spoke to his horse – and he didn’t just say things like ‘Whoa there!’ or ‘Giddiup!’ but sometimes he directed more intellectually challenging questions at him, such as: ‘How are you doing today, Bruce?’ or ‘We’ll soon be there, Bruce . . .’
Sometimes – and now I’m telling you things that Tom himself would never have admitted to – he even carried on conversations with his horse. That is what he was doing now.
‘Bucephalus?’ he began. Bucephalus, or Bruce as he was known more often than not, snorted. He was listening. ‘This is a dangerous game I’ve got myself into,’ said Tom.
‘You didn’t get yourself into it,’ replied Bruce with a snort and a toss of his head. ‘You’ve been trapped by those wretched Visconti people. Why you bother with . . .’
‘You’re right,’ Tom interrupted him. It was never a good idea to let Bruce ramble on too long. ‘If I could just get Squire John out of that prison, we could leave Lombardy and forget about the whole damned lot of them.’
‘How are we going to get him out?’ asked Bruce.
‘We’ll find a way,’ said Tom without conviction.
‘Anyway, Tom,’ snorted Bruce, ‘it’s a lovely day!’ And the horse was right. It was a lovely day.
Out of sheer joie de vivre Tom gave three short, sharp whistles, and Bruce started bucking and kicking. ‘Whoa there!’ laughed Tom, patting the horse’s neck. ‘Just checking you still remembered! There, boy! It’s all right!’
It was a little trick he had taught the horse in the early days, but it had been many years since they had last tried it out. Although – now he came to think of it – it was somebody whistling that had set Bucephalus off rearing and kicking during that boar hunt some weeks before.
‘You almost got me killed on that hunt!’ exclaimed Tom, remembering how he’d been unseated and then the boar had chased him off a cliff.
Bucephalus snorted something about not being responsible for the outcome when he was only obeying orders, and Tom laughed and patted his mane. The fact was, despite the problems all around him, Tom had not been able to stop his usual optimism welling up within him as he and Bruce wound their way across the plain of Lombardy. There were skylarks in the air above, so high up they were invisible, and yet their one long continuous song accompanied him from Pavia to Milan – as if it were one bird keeping him company the whole way. ‘It’ll be fine! It’ll be fine! Get a move on down there! Get a move on down there!’ they sang, and Bruce had picked up his gait as they travelled north.
The summer heat had become intense, and the distance had begun to shimmer and ripple as if it were gum arabic melting in an alchemist’s retort. The road was dusty and Bruce’s hooves sent up clouds of fine dry powder – the calcination of some worldwide alchemical experiment – as they clopped along under the broad blue sky.
Lombardy stretched out around them, its soul bared towards that implacable sky, as exposed as its people were to their all-powerful lord. And Tom, too, felt equally exposed and alone, riding as he was into the mouth of the serpent.
By the end of the journey, however, any sense of solitude had slunk away into the maze of narrow streets that clustered outside the southern walls of the city of Milan. These southern suburbs had become a city in their own right, and the streets were as crowded as the streets within the walls. Actually there were more donkeys on the street than people, but then that was not particularly unusual.
Nor was it unusual to see country folk approaching the great gates of Milan carrying vegetables in baskets on their heads, or beating donkeys that were almost invisible under their burdens – bundles of wood, sacks of flour, strings of onions, sacks of cabbages, and sometimes the odd chicken hanging from the saddle, mute and helpless. Nor was it unusual for a knight like Tom to have to wait for a moment while a herdsman guided his flock of sheep between the houses.
It was strange, Tom reflected, how most human beings would give way to an armed knight on horseback, but not sheep. In the sheep’s world there was little difference between ruled and ruler. All human beings were just that to them – simply human beings – and their otherness, in the eye of a sheep, gave them anonymity and equality.
No, thought Tom, there was nothing unusual about today. Tradesmen joked to each other after a customer left. The cobbler reached up to lift a pair of boots from the rail above his head. A spice merchant shook the hand of a good customer who had just arrived to buy a little dried saffron and some cinnamon but not too much.
As Tom turned a corner, there in the middle of the street, a tailor was holding up a man’s arm as he fitted him with a half-made doublet. A little further on, at a low counter, a woman was bent over, examining a necklace, while the jeweller eyed her with undisguised contempt. He knew she was not going to buy it. He always knew which of his customers would and which of his customers wouldn’t. And even when they did contrariwise to what he expected, they were simply the exception that proved the rule. The jeweller’s wife knew better than to argue with him. She also knew better than to tell him about all she did when he was away buying precious stones. It was all perfectly usual.
There was not even anything unusual about the way the day was drawing to a close, nor about the way Tom could see the first lamps being lit in shops and homes, for his elevated position on horseback allowed him to see into windows that were too high for the ordinary pedestrian-on-the-street.
Nor was there anything in the least bit unusual about the smell of freshly baked bread that was now drifting across from
a side street. It was delicious, but not unusual.
And yet there was something very different about the whole place. Something peculiar. For a while Tom couldn’t quite put his finger on it, then he suddenly realised that it was staring him in the face . . . it was obvious . . . it was all around him . . . wherever his eye came to rest.
The entire town seemed to have been afflicted by a black plague – no, not the Black Death, although that was still around and claiming its arbitrary victims. But that was invisible and stealthy. This was a visible plague of blackness that was thrust in front of your eyes wherever you looked.
Out of every window hung a black cloth or shawl or blanket. The counters of shops were draped in black. The statues of the Virgin that stood at almost every corner were shrouded with black. Black was everywhere: on men’s arms and in women’s headdresses. Even the gatehouse of the city had caught the disease, with long folds of black fustian hanging from the loopholes on either side.
Strangely enough, however, nobody looked particularly dismal or gloomy. They just seemed to be going about their business as people usually do, which was, perhaps, why Tom had not at first noticed the outbreak of blackness. Now he had noticed it, however, the black epidemic was generating a gloom in Tom’s spirits. He couldn’t explain why, but he felt a chill rising up from his kidneys, and he was gripped by an illogical – but nonetheless powerful – foreboding as ominous as the Visconti emblem of the serpent swallowing a man which now loomed above him, painted over the entrance to the city.
Bruce too shivered under his girth. And that decided it! As far as Tom was concerned, if his horse felt something was wrong, then something was definitely wrong. Tom would need to be on the alert.
Which is more than can be said for the guard at the gate. Tom could see him through the open door of the guardroom; he was sitting on a broken chair rocking backwards and forwards with laughter.
The guard glanced up at Tom, but went on laughing and talking to someone else whom Tom couldn’t see. Eventually, the man stood up and sauntered over. He looked at Tom curiously. In fact he looked at Tom so curiously that Tom’s hand instinctively dropped to his sword hilt.
He held out his papers, and something about the way the guard took them made the skin on the back of his neck prickle. Was he imagining it? Or had the normal boredom of guard duty been replaced by something else . . . something keener . . . something sharper?
Tom glanced around nervously as the guard took the papers into the guardroom, saying: ‘I just have to get this signed. New regulation.’ He said it so casually that Tom didn’t believe him.
Tom’s hand closed around the grip of his sword. Whispering came from inside the guardroom. Why would he be whispering if he were simply asking for a signature?
Tom’s nerves began to stretch like a bow string left out in the rain . . . instinctively he turned Bruce round 180 degrees, ready to make a fast exit, but the guards must have heard the manoeuvre, for before Bruce had completed it, two of them dashed out from the guardroom and seized the bridle.
Tom pulled out his sword and raised it over the two men. ‘Let go!’ he said.
‘No!’ shouted another voice. ‘You! Drop the sword!’
Tom turned and saw the first guard standing in the doorway aiming a crossbow at him. Without a second thought, Tom struck at the soldier to his right, slashing his arm, and at the same time he flattened himself over Bruce’s neck. Almost instantaneously, the bolt from the crossbow grazed the back of Tom’s jerkin and hit the far wall. The maimed soldier screamed, but managed to cling on to the horse’s bridle, and nothing Tom did could shake him off.
In desperation Tom suddenly gave three loud whistles, and Bucephalus obligingly reared in the air, tossing both guards to one side. But the horse’s nerves were clearly stretched as taut as his master’s, and he seemed to overreact. Before Tom could regain control, he found himself being flung through the air, and he landed sprawled across the injured guard.
The guard with the crossbow ran out of the guardroom, yelling to some others who had appeared from the auxiliaries’ quarters, but Bucephalus’s front hooves struck him in the face as the horse pirouetted, dragging another guard with him. The guard dropped his crossbow, clutched his face and screamed before falling backwards, while the new guards bellowed incoherently. The men already on the ground were still cursing and sobbing in equal proportions, while Bruce snorted and pounded his hooves on the wood of the door.
Tom didn’t stop to introduce himself to the new set of guards. He just leapt over the injured man, threw himself out of the gatehouse and ran down the street the way he’d come.
Such was the confusion that it was some moments before the guards realised that Tom had escaped, and, by the time they were in a position to give chase, he had disappeared into the side streets of the southern suburb.
Tom wasn’t even sure whether they’d actually followed him. He flung himself first down one side street and then another, until he finally found himself outside a dismal inn of the sort no self-respecting knight who cared for his reputation would wish to be seen dead in – let alone alive. It suited him down to the ground. He ducked under the low doorway and entered.
If there had been a conversation going on, it stopped the moment Tom stepped over the threshold. Two men were sitting on stools in the dark interior. A woman was just lighting what was meant to be an oil lamp, but which gave so little light that it might just as well have been a slightly mouldy salad.
One of the men was emaciated and had very few teeth. The other wore his hair unfashionably long. Both looked as worn and ragged as their clothes.
The woman, by contrast, had all the appearance of someone scrubbed and bright and fresh. A cheerful red cord fell gracefully from her shoulder. As she coaxed the wretched lamp into giving a little more light, her presence seemed to make the room brighter than it really was.
Tom ordered a little wine and some water, and then turned to the two men. He was slightly disconcerted to find they were both staring at him.
‘It’s been a fine day,’ he nodded.
The thin man grunted in a way that gave Tom absolutely no idea whether he was agreeing or disagreeing. The man with the unfashionably long hair bared his teeth for several moments. Tom wasn’t certain whether he was snarling at him, smiling at him or merely exercising his facial muscles in some arcane religious ritual related to the worship of teeth.
‘You’ll get nothing out of him,’ said the thin man, nodding towards his companion. ‘He can see you. He can hear what you say. But he don’t know what you are. I can see you. I can hear what you say. And I know what you are.’
Tom had no idea how the conversation had arrived at this point, or what was meant by it, but it certainly wasn’t the sort of discussion any self-respecting spy would want to find himself plunged into from the word ‘Go!’
‘How interesting,’ he said, in a tone of voice that he hoped would vividly communicate his urgent desire not to hear another word. He turned away from the two men and looked out of the window. No sign of a hue and cry so far. Maybe he was going to be lucky.
On the other hand he had already had more than his share of ill luck for one day. He had lost his papers and – what was worse – he had lost his horse. How he was going to retrieve either he had no idea. And on top of that he wasn’t even in the city of Milan. He was still outside, with very little prospect of being able to get in.
And then what had actually happened in the gatehouse? Had the guard really been acting suspiciously towards him or had it all been in his own mind? The more he thought about it the more he realised that the guard had only acted aggressively when he turned Bruce around . . . maybe it was simply Tom’s nervousness that had made them suspicious.
But if he had just committed an act of monumental folly, it was too late now. He couldn’t just walk back to the gatehouse, apologise for maiming not one but two – maybe more – of the duke’s guards and ask politely for his papers and horse to be returned.
‘They’re both mad as cuckoos,’ said the cheerful woman, nodding towards her other two customers.
‘Thank you,’ said Tom, and he fumbled for a way to inquire why the town was in mourning, without sounding like he was a total stranger who had no idea what was going on in the city. All he could come up with was: ‘Who died?’
The cheerful woman, however, looked mystified. ‘Neither of them has died yet!’ she explained rather carefully, as if to someone who couldn’t spot a rock if it were thrust under his nose. ‘Although you could be forgiven for thinking they had.’
‘No, I didn’t mean them . . .’ Tom suddenly became aware that the cheerful woman was now rubbing his shoulders rather vigorously.
‘I could put a bit of life into you, sir, if you’d care for me to?’ she was saying rather quietly.
‘What I meant was . . .’ But before he could say any more, he became aware that the cheerful woman had stopped rubbing his shoulders and was now staring at him.
‘But we know each other . . . don’t we?’ she was saying.
‘I don’t think we do,’ said Tom.
‘You’ve been here before, haven’t you?’ said the cheerful woman.
‘No, I haven’t,’ said Tom.
‘But I know you . . . I know I do . . .’ said the woman.
Tom glanced out of the window. In the fading light the streets looked suitably sinister, but there was no sign of any pursuit, and Tom began to think that perhaps it would be better to take his chances out there on the streets, rather than stay any longer in this particular inn.
