The French Executioner (22 page)

One-handed men abounded in any town in Europe, unlucky thieves mainly whose lives might have been spared but whose existence
was bleak after such a maiming. The free wine had lured a few such already and they eagerly rushed forward to surround Giovanni
at the prospect of more.

‘Where are you going?’ Beck whispered, for the Fugger had got up and was divesting himself of his sack.

He knew that discussion or too much thought would weaken him, so he said quickly, ‘You wanted to get into his palace. This
could be the way.’

‘You’d put yourself into that demon’s clutches? Are you mad?’

The Fugger dropped the sack at her feet. ‘As mad as you. For it’s what you’ve been trying to do.’

‘But I have a … a very important reason. Why would you do this?’

The Fugger thought for a moment. ‘I have a reason too. The Queen’s hand is in there. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, when Jean
arrives, we could have it for him?’

The mention of that name again. A vision of his arm holding up the waterseller’s awning. She’d said something that had made
his eyes narrow, and look within her own. And then he was gone.

‘He’s on the death galleys. He’ll never come back.’

The Fugger just smiled and said, ‘But of course he will.’

‘Fugger!’ Beck grabbed him by the handless arm. ‘People never return from Cibo’s dungeons. Never. I will not hear of you again.
Just as I have never heard from my father.’

She had blurted it out, something she had not told anyone in ten years.

‘Your father is in there?’

‘Yes. Yes, I think so. If he is still alive, which I feel he is, he is in there. Cibo’s prisoner. He makes him do … terrible
things.’

‘All the more reason for me to go.’

‘And never return? Are you so eager to be lost again? How can I help you if I do not know where you are?’

He thought for a moment.

‘Wait!’ he said, then whistled, and the raven, who had flown off to harry pigeons by the tower, flew down and settled on his
shoulder. He stroked its head, just between the lustrous sable eyes, and it curved down to his touch, lulled by the caress.
Carefully he reached up, took the whole glossy body in his cupped hand and tucked it under his clothes into the small of his
back. ‘Daemon will fly between us. He will bring you news of me.’

‘You are mad,’ was all Beck could manage.

‘That’s what I’ve been told.’

She watched him walk right up to the Archbishop’s manservant, and as he walked she saw him begin to adopt the cringing, hopping,
shuffling gait she somehow knew had been his life before.

‘Master,’ said the Fugger. ‘Ooh, kind master, look what I have for you here.’

And he thrust the stump right into Giovanni’s face.

Heinrich caught the recoiling Italian and thrust him back towards his latest recruit. He had the oddest sensation that he’d
seen this gibbering fool somewhere before, but his head still hurt badly, his vision was still blurred and he put it down
to that. He hadn’t chopped off any hands in Italy after all. That activity had taken place years before, back in Bavaria.

Shaking himself to clear the mists, he barked, ‘Come on, this will do for a beginning.’ And, using the big club he always
carried in these streets, he none too gently began to shepherd his half dozen or so recruits out of the Campo and along the
Via del Pellegrini towards the Archbishop’s palace.

Beck followed, watching the Fugger spinning round and round, doing his little dance. Pausing before the baptistry, for a moment
he froze and raised his one hand in a gesture that could only have been a farewell. Then he was through the archway, and the
black gates swung shut upon him.

‘A sail! Three sails! To larboard!’

It wasn’t the fact of the cry but the tone of it that froze every person on the
Perseus,
Muslim and Christian, freeman and slave. Sails were a common sight on this busy sea. They did not draw forth the edge of
terror that all could hear in the lookout’s voice.

Ake heard it, suspended upside down, bleeding from his chest wound and the three gashes where the skin had been torn from
his back. Corbeau, poised above him, knife in hand and deciding where to make his next incision, heard it. Jean, Januc, Haakon
and Da Costa heard it, and their eyes swivelled to the source of the fear. On the quarterdeck, de la Vallerie heard it and
reached for his telescope.

‘Hell’s minions!’ he thundered and, without removing the instrument from his eye, bellowed at Corbeau, ‘When this is over
I want that lookout flogged to death. How did he let us get this close?’

He studied the red curved sails tacking against the wind that filled the
Perseus’s
own sail. With that behind him and more notice he could have outmanoeuvred, then outrun, these three. They had more rowers,
but they were heavier galleys and a galliot would always take them with a following breeze. But they were spaced wide, a net
thrown out to trap him. Now it might have to come to a fight in which he was heavily outnumbered. Unless … De la Vallerie
had
served on these waters for twenty years. He knew a trick or five.

‘Corbeau, get onto the gangway. Double time.’

‘Aye, Captain.’ Corbeau stuck his flaying knife into his belt and turned back to the deck. Then a thought came to him, and
his one eye gleamed up at his leader. ‘Captain? Which direction?’

De la Vallerie smiled. Corbeau hated it when he did that. ‘Straight at them, of course. Ramming speed.’

Cursing him for a big-nosed lunatic, Corbeau nonetheless did what he was told. He wanted the flaying knife to stay in his
belt, not to be used on his own skin.

‘Drummer! Strike double time!’ he yelled as he ran aft. ‘Row, you swine! Row till you burst!’

‘Augustin.’ The captain turned to his sergeant-at-arms standing nervously at his side. ‘Get your gun crew forward and your
arquebusiers in position. I will be arming in my cabin. Call me when we are twenty cables away.’

‘Aye, Captain. And the prisoner?’

De la Vallerie didn’t even glance back. ‘Punishment to continue after this little interruption. Leave him where he hangs.’

Before they needed all their wind to row, there was a brief clamour on the benches.

‘Mershiful Chrisht!’ wailed Da Costa. ‘Three to one and he’sh attacking? Big Noshe hash gone mad.’

‘Not only that, old man.’ There was an edge to Januc’s voice that made Jean look at him. ‘They’re all galleys.’

‘Then we’re losht. We might ash well give up now.’ Despite this, the Portuguese still rose with the rest of them and fell
back onto the bench at the whistle’s blast, pulling the big oar through the water, sending the
Perseus
scudding across the calm surface of the sea.

‘Why?’ yelled Jean. ‘What does it matter that they are galleys?’

The old man just groaned, already losing his breath, so
Januc continued for him. ‘Double the men over a galliot, double the oars. It’s a bigger boat and we could outrun them, especially
with a following wind.’ They rose and fell. ‘But they’ve stretched their mouth too wide.’

Again Jean heard the tone, the excitement in it.

Rising, falling, sweat already cascading off them all.

‘I don’t much care.’ Haakon grinned, a fire in his wild blue eyes. ‘I’ve never been in a sea fight. This should be fun.’

‘Fun?’ was all Jean got out before the crack of a whip across the Norwegian’s shoulders silenced him.

Corbeau stood above them, and he had swapped his nine-thonged weapon for a bullwhip. In a fight, he knew you needed greater
powers of coercion, especially for the Muslims. ‘Save your breath, you dogs!’ he cried. ‘Row harder, unless you want to end
up prisoners of Allah.’ He moved further up the gangway, lashing out all the way.

‘Just one chance,’ muttered Haakon, staring after his persecutor. ‘Just one.’

Januc needed no such cattle-hide encouragement; he was rowing as hard as he could.
Two years I’ve waited for this,
he thought.
Two years for the corsairs once more to challenge the navies of Europe.
He knew that he could drown, be killed by an Arab arrow or a Christian bullet, but he also knew that should he survive the
inevitable corsair victory would see him free again. Free to return to the life he loved, to harry the enemy for the glory
of his master, Barbarossa, and his own profit; to set up a base like he’d had in Tunis, with beautiful women to tend him,
another oasis of blue tiles and flowing water under a desert sun. And if this lunatic captain wanted him to rush towards that
fate, he was only too happy to help him. Former comrades awaited, he felt sure, under those curving sails, men who would know
and honour the name of Januc. So he rose and fell and pulled as if the strength of his arms alone could deliver him to this
glory.

The lunatic in question returned from his cabin and made his way down the gangway to the forward deck. He was
dressed in full armour of gleaming black, purchased in Milan at the cost of all the prize money from a particularly profitable
voyage. It was light, he could dance and leap in it, and he could certainly wield the Turkish bow he held and the heavy rapier
that dangled at his side. The armour was made of a series of alternating planes that would deflect all the arrows sent at
him. He knew how the Turks and their pirate allies still preferred the old ways of saturation archery over firearms, imagining
that, of the thousand arrows they sent at their Christian enemies, one would find a chink in their armour. He also knew why
you paid for the best – no chinks.

When he reached the foredeck, de la Vallerie had no need of his glass, for the three corsairs stood no more than half a league
away and the distance was closing rapidly. He could make out their preparations for battle, the archers massing on the decks
and in the rigging, lightly armoured swordsmen preparing the ramps, boarding nets and grappling hooks they’d need to latch
on to this Christian prize seeming to slide so happily into their clutches. The middle ship of the three was where their captain
was. De la Vallerie could just make out a white turbaned figure in black robes despatching men to prepare his own ship and
signal to the others.

He must be a happy man,
de la Vallerie thought.
A dainty little sardine, the
Perseus,
for him to snaffle up.

The enemy was coming within range of their gun, which was called ‘No More Words’ for its actions spoke for itself. The master
gunner, Ganton, was a surly Breton, a terrible drunkard in port but a sober expert of his trade at sea. He had been with Louis
for ten years now, and though his manner was usually less than respectful his skill had saved them in many a desperate scrap.
Louis felt sure it would save them now. He called down to him on the gun platform at the prow of the ship.

‘Ganton, the range, if you please.’

‘And about time, Captain. I’ve been lining that scum up for a while.’

He bellowed his orders, sighted along the barrel, made some alterations to the elevation gears and touched a flaming taper
to the hole. There was an immediate roar, and the solid shot he’d loaded sailed over the middle ship, clearing it by a mast’s
height.

The whole of the
Perseus
acted as the gun platform, and Jean felt the recoil buck through the ship which seemed to rear up and plunge back into the
water. A few oars went astray at the sudden violence, and it took Corbeau several moments of bellowing and lashing to get
his men to return to the rhythm.

They were so close now they could hear the jeering of the corsairs’ crews.

‘Enough, Ganton?’

‘Enough, Captain. Next time I’ll take out their mast.’

De la Vallerie smiled and said, ‘A mast it is, but not that one. Load with chain, and be ready for my command. Corbeau!’ He
called down to his one-eyed subordinate. ‘Stop whipping that man and come up here!’

When the brute was beside him, and his pomander, now filled with pot-pourri, was raised to ward off the smell – he’d found
it the most effective mixture against the scent of blood – de la Vallerie explained, from behind it, the manoeuvre he required,
then added, ‘As you know – stop twitching, man, and listen to me – as you know, the perfect galley should be as a young and
charming girl in the dance whose every gesture reveals her gentility, her vivacity, her alertness, while preserving a becoming
gravity. How much more so our delightful galliot
Perseus.
Well, she shall prove herself with one beautiful flourish. Then we shall see if all your training has paid off. And if it
hasn’t’ – and here he lowered the pomander enough for Corbeau to see his smile – ‘either I or the Arab shall strip your skin
from your body.’

Having listened to further precise instructions and with a hasty glance at the example of the hanging and somehow still breathing
Ake, Corbeau went cursing back to his station.
Most of the crew had been with him long enough to react instantly to his orders, but the captain now required a bare second
of perfect timing. All their futures depended on it.

The enemy were close enough now for those on the
Perseus
to hear the words they sang to the blowing of their trumpets and the crash of cymbal and drum. At a signal from the captain,
the
Perseus’s
own three musicians struck up, on trumpet, fife and tabor, and played a martial theme in reply.

‘Now, Corbeau, now!’ yelled de la Vallerie.

Corbeau bellowed above the noise: ‘Triple time!’ The drum pounded and with the extra surge the
Perseus
seemed to leap out of the water and take to the air. Three strokes, and he cried again, ‘Ship starboard oars!’

All the oars on the right side of the ship were pulled in, while the port side rowed on. The
Perseus
slewed viciously to starboard, but maintained its hurtling speed.

As the bow came around, de la Vallerie said calmly, ‘Now, Ganton, if you please.’

With a final spin of the adjusting gears, the master gunner put taper to hole. The sailcloth packets full of lengths of chain
and shards of jagged metal hurtled at one hundred paces into the sails of the corsair galley to their right, shredding them,
dropping mast, rope and rigging onto the Arab’s deck.