The Tyrant and the Squire

by Terry Jones

Not that he didn’t think the cheerful woman wouldn’t be a perfectly charming companion who could probably put a considerable amount of life into him, if it came to that, but right then Tom had other things to think about.

  For a start, once it was really dark, he had to find some way of getting back into the city. He then had to find his way into Regina della Scala’s presence. He had to find his squire, John, and release him. He also had to find Bucephalus and rescue him. Given a perfect world, he probably even ought to try and get his papers back.

  It was going to be a busy night as it was, and ‘having a bit of life put into him’ wasn’t really on the agenda.

  But the cheerful woman now had his arm in a firm lock.

  ‘Where was it we met? It was here . . . wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Tom tried to sound really definite about this, as he tried to extricate his arm.

  ‘No . . . let me think . . . I’ll get it in a moment . . .’

  ‘Would you let me go, please?’ said Tom. He tried to say it as politely as possible, but really it isn’t one of those things that’s got a polite way of being said.

  ‘We have met . . .’

  Tom felt he simply couldn’t bear another round of this particular quiz.

  ‘I have an important appointment with the duke. So I’d better be off.’

  Now these words, spoken with so little thought, had a remarkable effect on the cheerful woman with the red cord. She sprang back from Tom as if he’d just announced that he had the plague. The cheerful expression that had seemed so habitual to her was instantly replaced by a look of fear that made her appear considerably older.

  ‘Of course, we’re in mourning here!’ she stammered. ‘We don’t go round enjoying ourselves at a time like this!’

  ‘Mourning for who?’ Tom would have liked to have asked, but he didn’t want to prolong the conversation, so he just muttered: ‘Fine . . .’, put a coin on the bench and extricated himself forthwith from the inn and the charms of the lady with the red cord on her shoulder.

  Once in the street, Tom stood and listened. Not only were there no signs of a pursuit, there were no signs of anything threatening whatsoever. On the contrary, everything seemed remarkably amicable. It was the time of that Italian ritual, the passagiata, when people stroll up and down, nodding to each other, tipping their hats, stopping to talk, smiling and generally doing all the things that people do when they are enjoying the cool of the evening air. Even the barking of a nearby dog sounded more like joie de vivre than a warning.

  And just above the hum of street conversation and the dumb chorus of footsteps, the soft evening breezes carried the bells of the six monasteries and eight nunneries of Milan to every quarter of the city and its suburbs.

  Tom was sitting on a low stone wall opposite one of the grander buildings in the southern suburb. He wasn’t quite sure what went on in there, but it was sufficiently important to have its side wall decorated with paintings. And one of these paintings now began to engage his attention.

  It was a curious picture of a man hanging by his left foot from a gallows. A devil was pulling out his tongue while a bearded figure – who could have been Bernabò Visconti himself – was pointing the man out to an executioner.

  Tom shook his head and smiled. He’d seen these pittura infamante – or ‘paintings of shame’ – in many Italian cities. They were a way of holding the enemies of the city up for public abuse and ridicule – or, rather, the enemies of the powerful oligarchs and merchants who controlled the city.

  Tom turned his head on one side to get a better impression of the victim of this particular pittura infamante, and the moment he saw who it was the explanation for everything that had happened since he had arrived in the south suburb of Milan hit him at once – like Ann cutting the Gordian knot.

  He was staring at a picture of himself.

  Chapter 21

  Milan 1385

  The moment he recognised who it was hanging upside down on the gallows, he became aware of all the other people who were also staring at it. Many of them were laughing. Some were shaking their heads. Some stopped to point at it, others simply walked by nodding at it.

  Presumably the guard at the gatehouse had seen this picture and so had the cheerful woman in the inn, and – as far as Tom could see – it would be only a matter of minutes before one of these passers-by would recognise the object of their ridicule sitting there admiring his own portrait.

  Trying to recreate his celebrated impression of an invisible carrot, Tom pulled his hood over that incriminating red hair and covered his mouth with his hand, as he muttered: ‘Time to get moving, legs.’

  And his legs did.

  *

  Some time later, night had fallen – pretty heavily. As a matter of fact, it had crashed down around Tom while he was fast asleep.

  Tom had found a hiding place in a small lean-to shed up against a house in a narrow alley. There he’d curled himself up, safe from the gaze of passers-by, and he had occupied himself until it was past curfew by trying to stay awake. But somehow or other he had failed.

  He only realised this when he was rudely awoken by the night falling on top of him. At least that’s what he assumed it was. In fact it was a man who had stumbled against the shed with such force that part of the roof had collapsed. The door also gave way and the man tumbled inside, adding his own weight to the number of inanimate objects that simultaneously hit the recumbent Tom.

  Tom leapt to his feet.

  ‘Ssh!’ said the man. ‘The nightwatch’ll hear you!’

  Tom was about to give the fellow a piece of his mind, when he realised that, intoxicated though the man may have been, his advice was nevertheless perfectly sound. There was certainly no point in attracting the attention of the nightwatchman.

  In any case, by the time these thoughts had flashed through Tom’s mind, it was hardly worth saying anything since the fellow appeared to be fast asleep. It was almost as if he had handed his sleep on to this stranger, like the baton in a relay race.

  Tom eased himself out of the alley, and looked about. All was still. What is more, it was both moonless and starless, which meant that as far as Tom was concerned it was a beautiful night.

  Now the trouble with city walls is that they’re generally constructed so as to keep out besieging armies. It’s an aspect of their design which makes them even more tricky to negotiate for the occasional civilian who wishes to gain unofficial entry.

  Tom gazed up at the height of that massive construction. There was a time when he might have thought of climbing it – in fact he remembered doing exactly that the first day he met Ann . . . or Alan, as he then took her to be. These walls, however, were quite a different matter. They were too high to even contemplate scaling without the requisite siege equipment.

  But there must be a way in, he told himself, and he started to walk around the perimeter of the city looking for the single chink in its armour that would be all he’d need.

  Now, as it happens, the Milanese in those days were particularly proud of their water. The city was set equally between two rivers, the Ticino and the Adda, and the good people of Milan were forever boasting about their endless supply of healthy, natural fresh water. They didn’t need cisterns or conduits, they said, they simply brought in the fresh water that surrounded them in such abundance. Almost every house could proudly point to its well, and even in times of drought the supply never failed.

  What is more, the city was entirely encircled by a deep wide ditch, and this ditch, as the Milanese never tired of pointing out to foreigners, contained not fetid, stagnant water, such as you might expect to find in any run-of-the-mill moat, but beautiful fresh spring water full of fish and crabs.

  Tom had been walking along the banks of this remarkable ditch for some time, before it suddenly occurred to him that here might be the very chink in the armour of the city that he was seeking. He knew that the miraculously fresh and healthy water of the ditch had to flow into the city its
elf at some point. Perhaps if he could find that point, he could squeeze himself in along with the water.

  As it happened, Tom had just reached one of the southern postern gates. It was of course firmly closed and bolted, but as he stood there listening to the echoes of the door he’d just rattled, he heard another sound. It was the sound of water flowing underground.

  A quick inspection of the flow in the ditch confirmed that this was, indeed, the point at which the superior quality ditch-water was allowed entry into the city: it was flowing in directly under his feet and then under the postern gate.

  Without stopping to think any longer, Tom stripped off his clothes. He tied them up into a tight bundle and then did what you might consider to be a very odd thing. He started to throw the bundle against the city wall. He did this several times, and you could have been forgiven for thinking that he had taken leave of his senses, until he finally managed to do what he’d been intending to do in the first place: he succeeded in tossing it high enough to go clean over the city wall, just next to the postern gate.

  The next moment Tom had plunged into the beautifully clean and healthy water of the Milan ditch and discovered that the Milanese had a tendency to exaggerate about these things.

  For a start, despite the day’s heat, the water was freezing cold. It didn’t feel at all healthy to Tom. And secondly, the visibility under the water was less than nil. Of course this is not strictly speaking possible, but that’s how Tom thought about it. The night itself was black as pitch – that’s why he’d had such trouble throwing his clothes over the wall – but underwater the blackness seemed to be trebled . . . or worse than that. Underwater the blackness took on a supernatural quality that allowed it to leak in through his eyes and fill his soul with feelings and thoughts too horrible to bear a name.

  Tom broke to the surface again, gasping for air. He held on to the bank for some time trying to calm himself. ‘Stop being a complete rabbit!’ he told himself severely. ‘It’s just water, and it’s dark. There’s nothing special about that.’ But all the same he found his spirits crushed out of him by the thought of having to plunge back down into that ghastly blackness.

  ‘Come on, Tom! You’ve just thrown your clothes over the wall,’ he reminded himself. ‘You’ve got to go . . . you’ve no choice.’

  And that was it. He had no papers, he had no horse, he had no clothes, and now he had no choice. He took a deep, deep breath and dived back into the inky stream. Down he swam, and forward . . . feeling with his hands in front of him . . . trying to keep the fear down in his chest . . . trying not to imagine something unholy . . . something unspeakable . . . suddenly flying at him from the invisible nearness . . . and at that moment his hands suddenly touched something . . .

  Panic seized Tom again and he struggled back up to the surface, only to find he was now under the postern bridge and there was no surface . . . the water came up right to the roof of the channel. His lungs were by this time at bursting point. He struggled round in the water and swam back desperately, feeling the rough stone of the underside of the bridge . . . it seemed to go on and on . . . he couldn’t carry on another second . . . his lungs craved the air . . . he had to breathe! He didn’t care whether it was air or water – he just had to take a breath . . . even if it was water it would be better than this . . . but at that second the roof of the channel rose a few inches and Tom thrust his head out of the water gasping and retching for air.

  His head whirled and it took him some moments to gather his wits. When he did, he realised that what his hands had come up against, back down there in the inky depths, was a metal grille. Of course! The good people of Milan wouldn’t have left this as a secret way into their city. There must be an underwater barrier of some sort across the channel.

  He was a fool for thinking he’d be able to get in here. And he cursed himself for throwing away his clothes before he’d found out whether he could or not.

  ‘Right!’ he told himself. ‘Situation, Alternatives, Action . . . well, the situation is obvious. The alternatives are to go back to Pavia without my clothes or . . . or what? To try and see if the portcullis is totally impenetrable?’

  Once again Tom’s heart sank like a millstone in a millpond. How could he go back down there, knowing there was no way up to the air? He stared through the black night at the black water and shuddered, both with the cold and with the fear of what he must undertake.

  ‘You have no choice,’ he reminded himself, took a deep breath and plunged back in. This time he swam faster, and before he could even think of turning back again he’d reached the portcullis. Feverishly he started to explore it with his hands. It quickly became apparent that he didn’t have a chance of getting through the gaps in the ironwork, but then he went down . . . his lungs already starting to ache . . . and suddenly . . . wonderfully . . . he discovered the bottom of the portcullis was a few inches off the bottom of the ditch.

  He was almost sure he could squeeze under it, but now he was running out of breath again, and he realised that he had no idea how far would he have to swim on the other side before he could come up for air. So he swiftly turned around and swam back to his breathing place on the bank.

  His teeth were now chattering like a hundred deathwatch beetles at an undertakers’ picnic, and he was shivering uncontrollably. But the next second he was diving back down into the blackness, and then he was squeezing under the portcullis, and next moment he was through and swimming up, and suddenly he broke the surface and was gratefully pulling in great gulps of air. He was frozen, he was shaking, he was half dead, but he was inside the city.

  Well . . . sort of . . .

  The water ran along a channel in between the city wall and another wall that rose four or five feet above the level of the water. It was impossible to haul himself out.

  A little further along, however, Tom could see an iron ring fixed into the wall. He managed to pull himself up onto this, and, prising his fingers into a crack in the stonework above, he was able to pull his feet up into the ring. From there, he was able to stand on the ring and could just reach the top of the wall.

  Normally it would have been a simple matter to pull himself up, but he felt as if the water and the blackness between them had washed all the strength out of him. Eventually, however, he got his leg over the wall and then dropped into the street outside the southern postern gate.

  All he had to do was find his clothes . . . but what clothes? Surely they weren’t that dark object that had somehow become lodged up on the roof of that house next to the gate?

  ‘Here we go again,’ said Tom, and he dragged himself onto the lowest window ledge. Then he hauled himself up to the upper window and, balancing on tiptoe on the window ledge, managed to reach the bundle on the roof. At which point the adjacent shutter of the window was flung open and a woman’s hand reached out and yanked him into a room.

  ‘Rudolpho!’ whispered the woman. ‘You’re naked!’

  The interior was as dark as the night outside, and Tom could see the woman no more than she could see him, but that didn’t seem to inhibit her in the slightest, for she was now running her hands over his back and kissing him before he could think of what to say.

  ‘And you’re wet!’ she cried. ‘Oh! You’re so impetuous!’ And she kissed him again and again, once more preventing Tom from speaking.

  To tell the truth, Tom couldn’t think what to say. The moment he opened his mouth, this unseen woman would realise he was not her Rudolpho, and she’d presumably scream blue murder and bring the nightwatch down on him.

  Then again, her hands were now straying to parts of his anatomy that made it imperative that he say something. So he pinned her arms to her side.

  ‘Oh Rudolpho!’ she managed to say, ‘I love it when you’re rough!’

  Tom clapped his hand over her mouth and whispered into her ear: ‘Don’t scream. I’m not Rudolpho, I was just getting my clothes from your roof.’

  The moment the woman heard Tom’s voice, she went
absolutely rigid, and the next minute she was kicking and biting and it was all Tom could do to restrain her.

  Eventually, however, she stopped and Tom was able to whisper: ‘I’m not going to do you any harm. I’m simply going to get dressed and leave, and I apologise for the intrusion. It was all a mistake.’

  When he felt certain she had calmed down sufficiently, he removed his hand from her mouth. She didn’t scream and so he released her altogether and felt around for his bundle of clothes, which had fallen on the floor.

  ‘Who are you?’ she hissed.

  ‘I am Sir Thomas English,’ said Tom. ‘I’m frightfully sorry for waking you up.’

  By this time Tom had located his bundle of clothing and had started to pull on his hose, at which point the woman suddenly started to scream.

  ‘I could understand it if you’d started screaming when I took my clothes off – but why now when I’m putting them on?’ he growled at her under his breath. ‘It’s so irrational!’

  The next second, however, Tom thought it was perfectly rational. There seemed every reason to scream, for a figure had just appeared at the window and was currently whispering:

  ‘Filippa!’

  ‘Oh! Rudolpho!’ she cried, running to the window.

  ‘Sh!’ whispered the figure at the window. ‘You’ll wake your husband!’

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ hissed Filippa.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Rudolpho, jumping into the room.

  Filippa was apparently too overcome to explain anything to her lover, and was now happily sobbing in his arms. And Rudolpho, for his part, was only too happy to console her. Tom grabbed his doublet and shoes and made a dash for the window.

  ‘Ah!’ yelled Rudolpho in alarm. ‘Your husband!’

  ‘No!’ was all Filippa could get out.

  ‘No?’ exclaimed Rudolpho.

  ‘I’m just leaving,’ said Tom, but before he could reach the window, he felt his arm grabbed.

  ‘Cheerio!’ said Tom.

  ‘Filippa!’ cried Rudolpho. ‘There’s a half-naked man in your room!’