The French Executioner (19 page)

It was Januc’s turn to whistle.

‘You were at Mohacz?’

‘I was. One of Frundsberg’s lambs, God rest the commander’s soul.’

‘Forgive me if I do not join you in that blessing. That German demon and his “lambs” nearly cost us the day.’

‘You were there?’

‘I was.’

‘You look too young.’

‘It was my first battle.’

‘As you can see, it was nearly my last.’

‘And mine,’ said Januc, pointing to the musket scar.

Both men fell silent and just looked at each other. Both, simultaneously, shook their heads and both for a moment returned
to that April morning in 1526 when the armies of Suleyman the Magnificent swept out of the conquered Balkans to meet the pride
of Bohemia and Hungary on a mist-filled plain called Mohacz.

In their silence there was the immediate bond of honourable foes.

It is very strange,
Jean suddenly thought,
but both the men I now sit chained between I have met in battle. That must mean something.

A huge row broke out behind them before any words could fail to sum up their memories. It came from the benches occupied mainly
by the Muslim slaves. Corsair pirates to a man, Da Costa had said, taken in various actions across the Mediterranean.

‘Infidel dogsh!’ The old man spat, drool running down his chin. ‘They feed thoshe bashtardsh lesh than the resht of us and
whipsh ’em more, and shtill they fight.’

‘So much for the camaraderie of the oar!’ Haakon joked.

‘Camaraderie with my arshe. Look, it’sh that Ake again. Corbeau will love thish. He hatesh thoshe blacksh. Shays they don’t
pull their weight. Callsh them hish Niger baboonsh!’

Jean saw a huge black man crushing a smaller white man against his chest. ‘Who’s that he’s wrestling with?’

‘I can’t shee … Hah! It’sh Mute! No wonder the black-amon’sh shqueezing him. He’sh from Nishe and the worsht thief on the
ship. Vicioush too!’

‘Pull them apart!’ Corbeau was screaming and he and his three assistants went in, whips flailing. Rowers on surrounding oars
pulled back to the limit of their ankle chains but were still struck in the indiscriminate lashing. They set up a huge roar,
blending with the partisan support for black and white.

Ake was shaking Mute back and forth as easily as a child’s doll; indeed, the smaller man seemed lifeless, for the air had
been squeezed out of him and he’d lost consciousness – but obviously not before he’d buried a shard of wood, prised from beneath
the filth of the deck and sharpened to a wicked point, into the black chest. This was, even now, causing a thick spurt of
blood to shoot from the giant. An inch lower, Jean thought, a slightly slower reaction from the African, and this Nicean gutter
trash would not now be feeling the steady crushing of his ribs.

It seemed that blood loss had weakened Ake, or perhaps he felt he’d killed the little rat who, Da Costa maintained, had probably
tried to steal the Negro’s already meagre ration; but suddenly Ake dropped him and sat back on his bench, clutching one hand
over the wound in his chest and one to his head to ward off the whips.

The shouting went on. Opinions, in nine languages and many more dialects, were delivered as to who was to blame. Ake’s fellows,
fifteen members of the same tribe, merely stamped in rhythm and uttered a low chant, rattling their chains in unison, while
Corbeau’s assistants moved among them delivering blows left and right. This did nothing to calm the hubbub; indeed, it seemed
to build and build in volume, especially after Mute, whom everyone presumed to be dead, so still had he been, suddenly rolled
over and vomited over Corbeau’s feet.

‘Quiet, you dogs!’ screamed the latter, enraged, kicking the unfortunate Nicean in the face, returning him to unconsciousness.
But his command went unheeded and the noise doubled and spread to other parts of the boat until everyone on the deck seemed
to be yelling.

Seven oars back, Da Costa was leaping up and down beside Jean. ‘Yah! Kick him again!’

‘Whose side are you on?’ laughed Haakon.

‘I hatesh that little wharf rat Mute. Shtole a fine shet of wooden teesh I’d had carved in Algecirash.’

‘Why’s he called Mute?’ Haakon liked to get the characters in any story right.

‘Tongue ripped out. Blashphemy, probably. Yah! Give him back to the blackamon!’

And with that Da Costa slipped out of the shackle and ran forward, as all the freemen did, to get a better look.

‘This piece of bread against your salt fish that the big man bleeds to death when they take that splinter out.’ Haakon held
out his hand.

Jean took it. ‘Done. He looks like he’s survived worse than that.’

The noise was still building and Corbeau and his gang were powerless to stop it, their yells and whip cracks lost in the furore.
They had retreated to the gangway, Corbeau shouting for his arquebus, when there was an explosion of gunpowder. All men ducked
instinctively.

‘What is the meaning of this outrage?’

A nasally voice spoke into the sudden stillness. Captain Louis St Mark de la Vallerie, universally known as Big Nose, stood
on the afterdeck. Behind him, twenty soldiers lowered smoking guns.

He had been on deck as little as possible during the voyage, only appearing to supervise manoeuvres. He hated it up there,
the stench was intolerable. Only in his little cabin with its small promenade, the wind coming from aft and blowing them along,
something scented always clutched to permanently
flared nostrils, was there some respite from it. Corbeau and Augustin, the sergeant-at-arms in charge of the eighty soldiers,
could receive their orders just as well away from the putrid smell. Of course, they always brought some with them, and were
quickly dismissed. Louis was happy to be left alone to play with the weapons that lined the cabin walls, shooting arrows he
made himself with the Turkish bow he’d seized in a sea fight at a float tethered to the ship’s aft, and reading the outrageous
writings of that bawdy ex-monk Rabelais.

He had been part way through a delicious passage in Gargantua that pierced, delightfully, the pomposity of so much Church
humbug when the steady build of noise distracted him, making him lose track of the complex argument. Then Augustin had appeared
at his door, yelling in his excitable way about ‘rebellion at the oars’.

‘Nonsense,’ said Louis and, clutching a large metal pomander filled with dried violets in one hand and a pistol in the other,
strode to the deck.

The volley, fired high, had been his idea of course. He had few enough rowers as it was, and Augustin wanted to shoot some
of them? The man was incapable of organising an orgy in a brothel! As the smoke cleared from the raised platform that dominated
the aft end of the galliot, the chaos below was brought into full view. The full stench came with it. He clutched his pomander
ever closer to his face and spoke around it.

‘Well, Corbeau, can you explain why I have been called up here to restore the order you have so obviously lost?’

Corbeau’s one eye glimmered in fury. ‘It was that bastard baboon,’ he stuttered, drawing a chorus of ape noises from the freemen
now gathered around, ‘and this piece of Provençal gutter filth.’

Corbeau was from Gascony, and proud of it. He took another kick at the prostrate Nicean, who yelped.

‘Get that scum back to their places,’ the captain shouted, and the freemen dodged back from the swinging whips as
they ran, making snorting noises through their noses. Corbeau hoped the captain didn’t understand. He was angry enough.

He was also oblivious. The only thing that concerned him was the instant restoration of order. These men had to be taught
to obey commands the moment they were issued. It was the difference between victory and defeat in a sea fight. Defeat was
something that preoccupied his mind, because he knew that if he was unfortunate enough to survive one, his impoverished drunk
of a father would never come up with any ransom money and he would probably end up chained to one of these benches himself.
It wasn’t the brutality he feared. It was the stench.

‘Bring the offenders before me!’

Locks were unclasped, the chain that linked each man to the other was slipped through, and Mute was thrown easily onto the
gangway below the captain. Ake proved a more difficult proposition. The loss of blood had caused him to faint and he was a
large weight to move. Corbeau and his two subordinates finally managed it, and the big man lay beside a now wide awake Mute.

‘And who started this?’

There was instant uproar as most of the white men yelled that it had to be the black’s fault. Flailing whips soon quietened
them, but one voice emerged from the Muslim benches. It belonged to Mugali, youngest of the Niger tribesmen, who had managed
to pick up some French.

‘Steal!’ he cried out. ‘He steal!’

He repeated this in his own tongue, which drew full vocal assent from the others, quickly again silenced by the whips.

‘Are you a thief, man?’ said the captain.

Mute’s tongueless denial was overwhelmed by the roar of laughter and repeated snorts that greeted the question.

Colouring in anger, de la Vallerie nonetheless carefully weighed up the options. All rowers were scum, and if he could punish
them all now, he would. But he was already
twenty short of a full complement and he needed every man who could row. But guilty or not, it was obvious the Negro was bleeding
to death while the gesticulating mute was recovering. Blaming and punishing minorities had the weight of tradition behind
it and could be used as a good example to discourage the rest of the scum. There was a long summer of campaigning ahead and
such an example now would be most salutary. Really, in the end, like most decisions, it was an easy one.

The pomander was removed briefly from before the nose. ‘Hang the black hog by his ankles from this railing. Flay him alive.’
There was some cheering as Corbeau and his minions struggled to hoist Ake into position at the captain’s feet, who added,
‘Oh, and tie his hands behind his back. If he pulls that stick out he’ll be dead before the sentence can be carried out.’
De la Vallerie had had a weapon stuck in him once, in a duel. Its removal had nearly killed him.

When they were done, and a bucket of sea water had been thrown over Ake to revive him for his torment, the captain spoke again.
‘You will see now what happens to those who seek to disrupt the proper working of the
Perseus.
Row well, keep out of trouble, obey orders. If anyone fails me just once, that man will repeat this fate.’

With a nod, he signalled Corbeau to begin.

Haakon, Jean and Januc were in the small minority of people who looked away as the knife point was slipped into the first
few layers of skin on the back and a large flap was torn away. They could not block their ears though, and even if they’d
made this weakening gesture it would not have kept out the high-pitched shriek, more animal than human, like a weasel in a
trap gnawing its own leg off. Most men, including a delighted Da Costa, watched in awe.

Sickened, Januc turned his gaze to the horizon. He was thus the first person on the ship to see the three sails. His eyes
had always been sharp and even at that distance he could recognise the distinctive curves of Arab corsairs.
I
should
know them,
he thought, his heart beating quicker,
for I have captained a few.

He didn’t tell anyone. News travelled fast around a ship and would, too swiftly, reach the ears of his gaolers.

Praise be to Allah,
thought Januc.
May my silence be another breath in your sails.

Giancarlo Cibo, Archbishop of Siena, had every reason to be happy. With a following wind from Toulon, the crossing to Livorno
had been mercifully short, a mere three days. There his discomfort and false poverty came to an end, for his manservant, Giovanni,
was at the dock to meet him with the palace carriage and the trip to Siena had taken less than a day on roads unusually empty,
clear and dry under a burning Tuscan sun. He’d even got his bodyguard back, for Heinrich had staggered aboard the boat just
prior to its sailing with the tale of their enemies’ hanging, swiftly told before oblivion took him.

Now he lay in a bath, a thing he did occasionally in the old Roman fashion, with a feast of welcome planned for the evening
and an orgy to follow, organised in her usual impeccable fashion by his voluptuous mistress, Donatella.

So he had won again! Even against the unexpectedly serious opposition. Winning always brought him pleasure, despite the fact
that he did it so often. Yet he wasn’t content and the reason for this lay in the saddle bag, road- and bloodstained, resting
on a chair less than an arm’s length from him. Even now he thought he saw movement from within it, a slight pressing outward
of the leather. Cursing, he looked away; but just as they had been when he’d seen the hand four days earlier on the ship,
his eyes were drawn back now to the dreadful prize of his victory.

‘I don’t believe in you!’ he shouted, the cry drawing a servant tentatively into the room, dismissed with an angry wave.

It had been the exhaustion, that was the only explanation. The hard journey, little rest – he hadn’t eaten properly in days.
Hermits who fasted, mutilated their bodies, deprived themselves of sleep, wouldn’t they then soar to ecstatic heights where
wondrous visions danced before them?

‘And if they can see the Madonna or Our Lord himself …’

Yes. His hardships could explain the horrifying vision of the unputrefied hand reaching out to him, the finger that pointed
in bloody accusation.

But there was one thing hardships could not explain – quite the reverse. Where was his cough? His sickness had been a part
of him for several years now – some days better, some days worse, but always a continuous presence. Until now.

Cibo shifted in the cooling water, aware of his puckering skin.

There had to be another explanation. Maybe the appearance of the hand was coincidental, his illness due to disappear anyway.
The combination of his surgeon’s treatments, the mercury and herbs, the letting of his blood, the prayers of his priests,
all these had finally effected the cure. He was not some credulous peasant raised from his sick bed by the touch of St Mark’s
collar bone. The six-fingered hand was a symbol only, a method of controlling minds.