The French Executioner (42 page)

‘Fugger!’ yelled Jean, to no avail, for the man was moving
as if in a trance towards the stage. Jean could only allow the momentum of the crowd to carry him in the Fugger’s wake.

Nearer the front, the crowd began to thin as disappointed suitors made their way back. Some stayed to watch and jeer, because
the girl’s father had now crawled up onto the dais and was pleading with those who held his daughter.

‘Lord! King of Kings!’ he implored. ‘She is the only child we have left. The only hope of her parents’ old age is a good marriage
for her.’

The beautiful face of Bockelson smiled down upon Cornelius.

‘Why, dearest brother and soon-to-be father’ – his voice was nectar, causing Alice to sigh – ‘can you think of a better future
than to be one of the wives of the Lord’s anointed? To stand at his right hand at the day of judgement? Besides’ – and here
he bent down until his face was closer, while the tone lost a little of its sweetness – ‘you talk as if you are trapped in
the old days before the revelation of the Word. There are no good or bad marriages. There is only union under the Law of God.’

‘My only beloved son was taken from this world.’ Gerta had joined her husband on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks.
‘Do not let me lose my daughter. Not yet. She is not ready.’

‘Silence!’ roared Jan Bockelson, raising his arms above the two prostrate figures. ‘Silence, and hear the word of your David!’

It was just then that the Fugger reached the platform. Two guards with halberds stopped his progress, but he was a mere few
paces away from where his parents knelt, and he had heard their last declarations. Into the silence that awaited the King’s
word, the Fugger’s voice exploded.

‘Mother!’ he cried. ‘Father! It’s me, Albrecht! He is not lost. He has returned!’

There was the sound of breath being expelled and held. No
one ever spoke when the King was about to pronounce. All had witnessed the terrible mutilations awaiting those who did.

His parents, turning at his cry, saw the familiar yet alien figure who struggled with the guards. His mother looked, looked
away, closed her eyes, opened them, looked again. His father stared, unbelieving. It was little Alice, clinging to King Jan’s
raised arm, who broke the silence again.

‘Albrecht? Oh, Sire, Lazarus has risen! The lost have been found!’

‘Let him up here,’ bellowed the King. ‘The prodigal! The prodigal returns! Praise be to the Lord, for this is His Miracle!’

The halberdiers parted and the Fugger fell onto the stage. His mother clutched his shoulders and both wept, while Cornelius
looked on, eyes narrowed, hands twitching. Before he could speak, there was a further eruption before the stage as the last
three of his would-be captors fell on Jean, and fell rapidly off again, clutching faces and sides.

‘Sire,’ yelled their leader through bleeding gums, ‘we caught these two sneaking into the city last night. They are spies,
our prisoners, brought before you for your justice.’

‘Seize him!’ commanded Bockelson, and the halberdiers and some of the elders fell upon Jean. Once more his sword was taken
and this time handed to the King.

‘Well, well.’ He turned the weapon over in his hands. ‘I’ve seen one of these before. Is it true? Are you spies, Philistine
assassins come to slay me?’

The Fugger, until then gripped by the power of once more holding his family to him, suddenly realised the danger he had put
himself and Jean in.

‘Most Mighty!’ he cried, prostrating himself. ‘We had heard of your glory. One of the prophets you sent out came to where
we rested and spoke the Good Word. I then knew I must return to the land of my birth, delivered by you from degradation. And
my friend here is a mighty warrior who saw
that your enemies were his enemies and comes to offer you the tribute of this, his sword.’

Jan, who himself spoke in the language of apocalypse, liked it when others did the same.

‘Is this true, swordsman? Have you come to swear fealty to me?’

Jean, who had fewer words and fewer ways with them, simply looked at him and said, ‘I have.’

‘And I can testify to his skill with that sword’ – the voice came from the back of the stage, pronouncing the words in heavily
accented German – ‘for I have seen him wield it often enough.’

‘Uriah Makepeace,’ Jean said as the masked man came forward, pulling off his leather disguise.

‘The very same.’ The removal of the shroud revealed a bearded face, a nose long ago broken and badly reset, a head bald from
nape to crown. He continued, in English. ‘Don’t worry about me revealing my face, they all know who I am. ’is lunatic-ness
’ere just likes the costumes. Oh,’ he continued with a smile, ‘and none of ’em speaks any English. Bit useful, that.’

Impatiently, King Jan cut in, in German. ‘Is he English, this fellow?’

‘French, your Holiness,’ Makepeace replied in the same language, ‘and a famed executioner. It was he who cut the head off
your precious English martyr what you was referring to earlier.’ Then he added, in English, ‘A contract that should have been
mine, you poxy French scavenger. Oh and ’e’s a little obsessed with ’er “martyrdom”, as ’e calls it, ’is March-hare-ness is.’

‘You! You are to be honoured among men! You will come tonight and tell me of her beauty, of her sacrifice.’ The King’s handsome
face was coursed with wonder and Jean, more and more confused, just nodded.

‘Enough!’ cried King Jan, as the tumult from the bleeding captors, reunited Fuggers, and a restless crowd built. He
spread his arms over them all and a silence fell immediately. ‘Lo, are the sundered joined once again. Lo, the miracle of
man and wife will soon be consummated. Lo, are new recruits gathered from all countries to fight for His righteousness. Now,
as it is written, in Jeremiah, chapter thirty-one, verse four: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O virgin Israel.
Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels and shall go forth in the dance of merrymakers.” ’

And speaking thus, the King of Munster began to spin his bride-to-be around and around. The trumpets played again and all
the Elders, all the townspeople joined in, leaping to the music.

Makepeace leant into Jean. ‘What I tell you? Mad, the lot of ’em. Why don’t you come with me, Rombaud? Unless you desire a
dance?’

Jean called to a still-weeping Fugger clutching his mother, his father a stiff and forlorn sight beside them. ‘Leave word
where I can find you.’

On receiving a nod, Jean followed the English executioner off the dais, filled now with whirling figures in Biblical robes.
Around and around they danced, slipping in the patches of fresh blood that coated the wood. None of them seemed to care.

The joy of the reunion lasted only until they crossed the threshold of the house.

‘My room,’ Cornelius ordered, disappearing into it.

‘I know you have had a terrible time, Albrecht,’ his mother whispered, stroking, for the hundredth time, his savaged wrist,
‘but so has he.’ She kissed him again, then let him go.

As the Fugger entered the room with its terrible memories, he ducked far lower than the lintel required, seeming to become
smaller, to shrink back in size to the boy who had wept so often within those panelled walls. He couldn’t help but look up.
There it was, as it had always been and would be until Doomsday – the hazel switch, thrust into the gap where the beam and
the loam of the ceiling failed to meet.

‘Well?’ His father had his back to him, standing before the heatless fireplace.

The Fugger knew what his father wanted and it was as if seven years were snatched away in a moment. He had just lost the family’s
gold at a roadside tavern in Bavaria. His stump began to throb as if newly sliced.

‘I was attacked, Father. Robbed. My hand …’ He held the stump up to the rigid back. ‘There were too many of them. There was
nothing …’

He faltered. The silence, the quality of the listening made him falter. It was like the moment after lightning, just before
the thunder.

‘Nothing?’

His father turned, his face blotched and purple, muscles twisted in the frenzy the Fugger had recalled almost every night
of those seven years. He recoiled, shrank still further into himself, forming a barrier with his own body as he had against
the fierce rains and scorching heat when crouched beneath the gibbet.

‘Nothing? Seven years gone, a family near ruined by your stupidity, and you say “nothing”?’ Cornelius was moving around the
room now, his limbs shaking with rage. ‘All the problems that beset us, all, commenced at the time you lost us our gold. If
we had had it safe in Augsburg with my cousin, I would not have had to remain in Munster, I could have got out sooner when
the madness began. Now, we have lost almost everything.’

He began to scrabble at the rock inside the fireplace. The Fugger looked up to see the stone come away and the light of the
candle flicker on the bright metal inside.

‘Look! By my skill I have built up our fortunes again, double, treble what you threw away. But I cannot get it out of this
city, and soon the forces of our liberators will take this town and wreak a terrible vengeance. They will not distinguish
between the fanatic and men like myself. They will kill me and take my gold. And the only child worth anything to me will
have been plundered by a lunatic. If she survives she’ll be worthless!’

The Fugger stuttered, ‘Father, they may spare the women—’

‘Spare? I care nothing about spare! She will be a broken vessel. I cannot sell the virginity she no longer has. She is livestock.
Once she has Jan Bockelson, she may as well have a platoon of mercenaries, one after the other!’ He looked down at his cowering
son. ‘And you! This all began with you, all of our misfortunes. You are as worthless as she will shortly be!’

In the depths of the gibbet midden the Fugger had heard his father say all this before, a thousand, thousand times, had
bent under the storm, wept into the dungheap, cried his unworthiness to the raven and the rats who were his only companions.

But that was before he met Jean Rombaud.

‘No, Father,’ he cried, ‘I have done such things! The man I came to Munster with? Jean Rombaud? He is the man who took the
head of England’s queen. He is my friend.’

‘A butcher for a friend? This is your achievement?’

His father had to see! Yes, his son had fallen as low as man can fall. But he had risen again. He was part of a noble quest.
He had entered the realm of the Devil and snatched the Devil’s prey. He had spoken to the shade of Anne Boleyn herself. His
son was the knight errant of a Protestant queen. Surely Cornelius Fugger only had to hear to understand?

‘No, Father,’ he said again, and poured out the glorious tale.

At first the older man interjected with insults and comments on his sanity. Gradually, though, he quietened, listening with
mouth half-opened to the scarcely believable events. And when the Fugger returned to the subject of what had brought him back
to Munster, his father reached into the cavern where his gold was hidden, pulled out a golden thaler and began to toss the
coin back and forth.

‘And this hand’ – his voice was soft now – ‘he has it with him still? Here in Munster?’

‘Yes, Father. We have escaped from terrible situations, and when we escape from here, we will fulfil Jean’s vow. We will journey
back to … to the place where we met, and we will bury it there. And our Queen can at last rest in peace.’

‘A queen, eh?’

The gold coin went back and forth between his father’s hands, catching the candlelight. The Fugger, now his tale was done,
felt suddenly very tired, the sparkle of the coin making his eyes droop.

His father went on, ‘I am thinking of another queen. At least one who would be thus … honoured. Ah, Albrecht.’
The hand that came down upon his shoulder made him wince, but it settled there and did a strange thing. It began to caress.
‘Albrecht, my dear son, don’t you see? You have the chance to redeem yourself to me. To save your sister, your mother and
the honour of the Fugger name.’

‘How, Father?’ The Fugger’s voice had risen a few notes. He couldn’t stop staring at the hand on his shoulder. ‘I would give
anything to do that.’

‘Of course you would. You are the son I raised you to be, a man of honour.’ Cornelius leant in, his voice low. ‘Jan Bockelson
thinks that this Anne Boleyn was a martyr to the cause of the new religion. Do not ask me how. You saw how excited he became
when he found out who your friend was. How much more so were he actually to possess a part of her?’

A hand on his shoulder. A gold coin still held up, catching the candlelight. The Fugger didn’t understand.

‘A part of her, Father?’

‘Yes, my boy. Give him this witch’s hand. He thinks he is God on earth, a new Messiah performing miracles. The only one he
hasn’t tried is the raising of the dead. It will stop him marrying your sister. He’ll be saving himself for Anne Boleyn.’

Suddenly the Fugger knew what his father meant. ‘You want me to betray my friend?’

‘You would rather betray your family? As you did before? When one act on your behalf could save them?’

‘Oh Father!’ Of all the horrors he had experienced in this room, this realisation was the worst. ‘No! I can’t. I can’t!’

‘You can, and you will.’ The tenderness had vanished. The purple blotches were back, the fury returned to the eyes. ‘For if
you do not, you will have betrayed us all again, consigned your sister to hell, your mother to rape and murder, your family
name to the devil. You will be punished in hell for that. Oh, and on earth too. Oh yes, punished on earth most keenly.’

The Fugger watched his father reach up to the roof where
a hazel switch lay in a gap between loam and beam. He closed his eyes, seeing only the deep blackness of a midden. The blows
that had fallen upon him there in his nightmares, just punishment for his innumerable sins, fell upon him now.

‘Another week, ten days at most, I reckon,’ said Uriah Makepeace. ‘They’re good fighters, for non-professionals, but it’s
the food that’ll wear ’em down. Always the same in sieges, right? King Jan’s going to let all the women and children leave
soon, and the women are the best fighters. The men won’t last long after they’ve gone. Someone will betray the city.’ He leant
forward. ‘Speaking of food, can I tempt you with another bowl of rat stew? I know a lot of people complain of it, but I’ve
always been partial to a bit of rat. Just as well, really.’