The French Executioner (11 page)

There was something else about the Count though, his face flushed with wine and the enthusiasm of the game. Jean was used
to bravado from his noble clients, used to the denial of approaching death from men who felt they were too young, too handsome
and too important to die. It sometimes lasted right up to the point of kneeling before the sword. Yet Jean had always been
able to penetrate even the strongest of brave fronts to expose the true fear beneath. This Count de Chinon seemed completely
lacking in it.

It perturbed Jean. He was there to do a job, whether he actually got as far as carrying it out or not. But there was a protocol
to be gone through, questions asked, answers received.

He waited silently, until the last card had been slapped down, a triumphant de Chinon snatching the final trick. Victorious,
he finally turned his attention to Jean, while his friend de Valmais, his exact counterpart in clothes and hairstyle, if of
a lighter colour and fuller beard, watched in amusement, shuffling the pack.

‘And so, Monsieur Headsman, what is it we need to discuss?’

‘Well, Milord, I wanted to tell you the procedure.’

The Count lazily waved a hand. ‘It is not necessary, really, I have attended enough of these events to know how they go. I
make a brave speech, I accept God’s will, I kneel, you strike … Pft! It is over, and so dies another traitor. What else is
there to know?’

‘If Milord would care to be blindfolded—’

‘No.’

‘And something must be done about Milord’s hair.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. Florian thinks my hair my best feature.’

At which both men burst out in loud guffaws.

‘But the blade, Milord, it—’

Again the hand. ‘Really, do not concern yourself with any of that. It will all be dealt with on the scaffold. I will see you
there.’

Resisting his dismissal, Jean had one more question, a somewhat awkward one.

‘Money?’ drawled de Chinon. ‘Really, you’ll have to wait to discuss that with my friend here afterwards.’

‘It is not customary, Milord—’

Now the Count reacted angrily. ‘I do not care for custom. It is my execution and I shall do as I like. You may go.’

Something was not quite right about this execution; the Count was unlike any martyr he had ever seen. But a waved hand and
a little smile at his companion dismissed Jean. The whole interview had lasted barely a minute, and it violated Jean’s sense
of professionalism. As he said to Haakon, who awaited him outside the cell, he hadn’t been planning on taking the Count’s
head anyway, if he could avoid it.

‘But there are certain understandings in our work, are there not? This young braggart seems to wish to violate them all.’

‘I don’t know about you,’ said Haakon, ‘but I think there has been a definite decline in the quality of clients in recent
years.’

‘Well, what do you think?’

The Bishop wasn’t happy with the Archbishop’s appearance. It didn’t fit in with the careful staging he’d ordered Marcel to
create. He would have much preferred His Eminence beside him on the scaffold the entire time, having emerged together from
the palace in full pomp and splendour, thus displaying the Bishop’s status to the world. However, one didn’t contradict a
man like Cibo when he’d obviously set his mind on something.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like my tailor to line it? Some rabbit’s fur, perhaps?’ he suggested.

‘Rabbit’s fur? In a cassock?’ The Archbishop let out his silky laugh. ‘I think that might stretch our friends’, the Dominicans,
tolerance a little far. I think they already suspect my motives for joining their parade. Besides,’ he added, twirling back
and forth in the plain brown, sack-like dress, ‘I rather like the feel of the rough wool on my skin. And I won’t be wearing
it for long. Mostly I shall be like this.’

He dropped the heavy cassock off his shoulders. It was held at his waist by a simple rope belt. The Bishop smiled nervously
at the suddenly exposed flesh, faint traces of his kittens’ scourging still dappling it in a web of rosy lines. Suddenly he
wondered if he had what it took to be an archbishop. If it wasn’t for his mistress and her grand plans for Orleans …

‘Now.’ Giancarlo Cibo moved across to a small table. ‘Which scourge shall I use? I did like those ones from last night, but
leather might be a little … formal? Simple knotted rope for a monk, don’t you think? Like this?’

And he hit the Bishop over his back. Even through his heavy surplice he could feel the bite.

‘Ah, ha ha!’ he stepped back, nervously. ‘That’s quite, um … do you, uh, do you think the people should see you, um, in the
flesh like this?’

‘Oh yes, that’s the whole point. Well, most of it,’ said Cibo. ‘We are burning men who claim, like Calvin and Luther, that
Rome is all decadence and corruption. Now we know how sadly mistaken these men are.’ He raised the scourge again and the Bishop
took another step away. ‘But if the people see me like this, merely another barefoot, suffering priest who happens also to
be Archbishop of Siena, well, the heretics’ argument is undone. And then they see me step into my robes of office to witness
the punishments, side by side with their own Bishop, well, the contrasting nature of the Holy Church’s teaching is most beautifully
demonstrated. You are pomp, I am poverty. And then I am God’s Anointed again.’

The most opposition the Bishop could muster to this was a
sigh. Moving surprisingly quickly, the Archbishop hit him again.

‘Besides,’ Cibo smiled, ‘you want me to end my visit well, don’t you?’

The Bishop could only nod, mesmerised by the softness of the Italian’s voice. He could feel the skin swelling where he had
been last hit. He felt the blow had perhaps even drawn blood. Well, at least tonight his guest would be gone, for his taciturn
German bodyguard had insisted they leave immediately after the execution.

Not before time,
thought the Bishop. He didn’t know how much more sin he could stand.

That same German had now silently entered the chamber. Rubbing his shoulder, trying to keep a smile on his face, the Bishop
said, ‘I’ll leave you to your, um, preparations.’

When the door had closed behind him, Cibo turned to Heinrich.

‘Well? What does my friend the Bishop of Angers say?’

A servant entered, bringing wine and fruit. Cibo beckoned his bodyguard forward and Heinrich bent down to whisper in his ear.

‘Really?’ Cibo smiled. ‘That much? You know, I definitely must have a word with the Pope. We can’t be taxing the French Church
enough.’

He moved across to the table where the servant, bowing, handed him a goblet of wine. Cibo sipped and ran his finger slowly
down the rope scourge.

‘Pity,’ he murmured, ‘such a pity.’

They had been assigned an antechamber to an antechamber at the back of the palace. Stale bread and some indifferent wine had
been provided. The Bishop cared little for the comfort of his executioner and it suited Jean to be thus overlooked, to rest
and think and make adjustments to the plan, such as it was. They would use the distraction of the execution and the heretic’s
flaming pyres to kidnap the
Archbishop, then force him to give up or lead them to the hand.

A small window gave on to the lane at the rear of the palace. Pushing open the shutters, Jean leant through the bars and whistled,
was answered by a familiar caw. Daemon settled onto the ledge and immediately began to groom his feathers. A moment later,
the Fugger was crouched below.

‘Is all ready, Fugger?’

The German hopped from foot to foot in his strange shuffling dance.

‘Oh yes, oh yes, the finest three horses that my winnings could buy await us.’

‘If all goes well, you will hear the commotion from the square before you see us. Be ready.’

‘I will, oh, I will.’ The Fugger disappeared down the alley.

‘Will he be all right?’ Haakon was occupied in honing his axe blade.

The risk of the next few hours, the poverty of the plan and the sudden weight of having even two men to command had made Jean
edgy.

‘Perhaps you would prefer to join him and hold his one hand?’ he snapped.

Haakon smiled. ‘Oh, I think not. Sounds like there’s more fun to be had in the square.’

‘Fun?’ Jean snorted. ‘You have a curious way of having fun, my friend. You’re more likely to leave that square dead than alive.’

The big man let out his rumbling laugh. ‘To die fighting is the Norwegian way of having fun. Death or glory and a speedy passage
to Valhalla. What a story that would make!’

Jean snorted again and turned away so the other man could not see him smile.
Jesu save me,
he thought,
pagans and madmen are my followers. And animals,
he added, as Fenrir echoed his master’s humour with a bark.

The door was flung open and in swept Marcel. He had
changed clothes since the abattoir, his hair gleamed now with oil, his slashed velvet jacket a blue and yellow shimmer.

‘Amateurs!’ he wailed. ‘Why will they not leave it to those who understand these things?’

‘Monsieur is having a problem?’ Haakon offered the distraught man a chair.

‘A problem? Yes! It was all so perfect. The Archbishop was to march with my master from the palace here, preceded by those
beautiful boys singing the “Te Deum” in their angelic soprano, the golden cross aloft, incense filling the air. And now …’
He sobbed, regained control of himself and went on. ‘Now the tedious man has decided to join the Flagellants.’

‘Flagellants, Monsieur?’ Jean brought Marcel some wine.

He gulped at it and continued, ‘Yes, Flagellants. Dominican monks. Twenty of them, they were to lead the Count de Chinon and
the four heretics from their cell, scourging themselves every step of the way. Now this … this Cibo has joined them. They
are to be the very last to appear, with the Archbishop the last of all. Such vanity. Such an … amateur!’

Wiping his eyes, he started fussing around the execution party. He had reluctantly agreed that Haakon should be Jean’s assistant
on the scaffold but was appalled at the state of their clothes, their drab grey cloaks, unadorned brown jackets and vests,
single-colour leggings. Headsmen, he was reminded, dressed not to be noticed. But what truly incensed the steward was that
the hound would be accompanying them, although he ceased complaining when Fenrir’s jaws closed in on the waving arm that came
too close and gently applied some pressure.

Marcel led them down narrow corridors to the palace’s great hall. Doors swung open upon a babel of shouting, flailing preparation.

Leaning down to Jean, Haakon whispered, ‘Should we not warn the Fugger of this change?’

‘No, it doesn’t alter the plan. You heard this Marcel say the
Archbishop will be the final Flagellant, so we will know him then. And there is another man to watch for, a tall German, looks
like a priest, a scar down his face. He was the one who felled me at the inn when I was captured. I think he is the bodyguard.
I know he is dangerous.’

Haakon’s grip tightened on his axe. As the gates of the palace were opened on to the square and the crowd roared its excitement,
he said, ‘Then I look forward to seeing him.’

Behind the palace, the Fugger already had.

Checking on his horses, he was muttering to Daemon when the Archbishop’s bodyguard entered the stable. He could hear what
the tall, scarred warrior was saying to the grooms – at least he heard words spoken, orders given, but the power of understanding
speech had been removed from him by the appearance of the speaker. For this was not the first time he had seen Heinrich von
Solingen.

His right hand began to throb, always a strange sensation since it wasn’t there. The last man ever to hold it, however, was.
His mind throbbed too, in a burst of white-light pain that merged with the flare of the groom’s reed torches, removing both
the Fugger and his countryman from a stable in Tours to a tavern in Bavaria seven years before.

‘A Fugger?’ the mercenary with the long fair hair and a wound running from brow to chin had cried. ‘That family of Jews who
bankrupt honest knights with their usury?’

‘Not Jews, Sir. We in Munster follow the word of Luther. And money-lending is now legal, thanks to the Emperor’s favour,’
the sixteen-year-old Albrecht Fugger had bravely said, the last brave thing he’d ever said.

‘Worse and worse, and worst for you.’ The face leant in, eyes afire with hate. ‘Seize him!’

No matter that it was a public place, no matter that Albrecht was a gentleman on his first mission for his illustrious family,
entrusted with bringing coin to their tin mines in the south. A table was swept clear of platters and
beer, his body thrown upon it, stretched out by willing helpers.

That face again, the scar livid in the fire glow, the mouth speaking foul words.

‘If I’d met you alone on the road, you’d be dead by now. You are lucky in that. But your money-grasping hands have ruined
many of us. No one here can deny a Catholic son of Bavaria the right to give you fitting punishment.’

The blade had glittered so high above him and fallen so fast, bringing the first flash of that white-light pain, blanking
out the world. When he returned to it, his servants, his money, his hand were gone. Gone too his former life, severed as surely
as his flesh. There would be no taking the road back to Munster, a cripple, in disgrace. His father, Cornelius, would not
see a maimed son, he would see only his lost gold. And he would reach up into the ceiling of his study and pull down the hazel
wand he kept there for special punishments.

No, the road could only lead away from that. Lead eventually, by diverse lanes and crossroads, to a gibbet in the Loire.

Cowering back into the stall, lowering his pulsing head upon his pulsing wrist, the Fugger wept.

The crowd had been waiting and drinking for hours. Now, as the first notes of the choir reached them, they surged against
the rank of guardsmen who, pikes at port, kept the space before the scaffold like a storm break in a harbour. As the headsmen
ascended the ramp, through the eyeslits in his leather mask Jean saw other soldiers in two lines forming a channel across
the square to the gates of the town hall, like the parting of the Red Sea for Moses.