The French Executioner (51 page)

Beck was gazing furiously above the head of the steward, into a memory. It was of a time when her father was just a colleague
of Giancarlo Cibo’s, before her flight to Venice. One of the Archbishop’s maidservants had taken a liking to the young and
lonely Jewish girl and had let her play in areas of the palace that she cleaned. One of them was a room where Cibo displayed
the results of his patronage. The statues were mainly flowing Greek and Roman nudes, men and women locked in fleshy embrace.
The paintings were similarly decadent. She remembered one especially because she was told that the subject of it was Jewish.

‘My sister dances as Salome,’ she said. ‘Dances for Herod to win the head of John the Baptist.’

The Italian was hopping from foot to foot, the filth on his shoes forgotten. ‘And does she ever perform this dance for anyone
other than your master?’

‘Well, not usually. But my master is out of the city at the moment. And she is easily bored. She could be persuaded …’

A fee was rapidly agreed, an advance paid, the arrangements made for later that night. The sum was high. Both of them knew
they were not speaking of mere dancing.

‘You arranged what?’ Haakon bellowed an hour later.

‘Look, help me brush out this hair, will you? We haven’t got much time.’

Beck had bought a small mirror in the shop next to the one where she had purchased the wigs. Between them they had spent most
of the advance, but she hadn’t needed much else. Just some silk. Seven veils were what she remembered from the painting. Seven,
dropped around the room, draped over furniture, over the watching, leering King.

Such was Haakon’s bemusement at the idea that he found the brush in his hand and had even pulled it through the thick tresses
of the wig a few times before he realised. He threw it down, just as Beck jumped up and began fiddling with the strings of
her doublet, her back towards him.

‘Are you mad, boy? What happens when you are in there?’

‘When
we’re
in there. I’ve brought you a headsman’s mask as well, try it on.’

He almost reached for it. ‘No! I mean what happens when you start to dance. They’ll see straight away, won’t they?’

‘See what?’

‘See what? May the gods give me strength! That you’re a boy!’

‘Will they?’

Beck had unbuckled the doublet and now pulled the undershirt off, swiftly followed by the bindings of cloth wrapped round
and round the chest.

‘Of course they will,’ Haakon sighed. ‘You can’t fool … leaping Christ!’

‘What?’ Beck was facing him now, hands on hips. ‘You’ve never seen breasts before?’

‘Not on a boy, no,’ murmured a suddenly subdued Norseman. ‘Never on a boy.’

It was strange. What was that word again? The one the Fugger used?

Paradox. Another paradox. This one concerned pain. Because the greater the agony he endured, the greater the reward when he
awoke later from his faint, flesh still imprisoned, mind quite clear. His tormentors would be gone, and the others could then
arrive.

They would all be there, sometimes together, as if they were sharing a meal again back in Tuscany, sometimes alone. Januc
would speak of scrapes and scimitars, the infinite advantages of a curving blade. Haakon would tell him several of his mother’s
homilies, each more untranslatable than the last. The Fugger would dance and shuffle before him, avoiding his eyes.

When Beck came it was different. There were so many things he wanted to say to her, that he had been unable to say before,
in their little time together. His strength had always lain in actions not words, and he regretted that now, because he was
suddenly unsure if she knew how much he loved her, how much that sudden recognition had shifted a weight that had pressed
down on him since his wife and child had died, like a stone rolled away from the entrance of a cave, letting in the light.
Yet now she told him she understood without his words, let him know it was the same for her – that he had arrived in the mansion
of her heart and painted every room there a different colour.

That morning, Cibo had joined his bodyguard, and his dispassion had been much more painful than the brutality of the German.
As Jean awoke from his enforced sleep, he twisted in his bonds and agony took him again. As there was no one there, he allowed
himself a scream.

The hand that touched him then was familiar and strange at the same time. He was comforted by its coolness, the way
the fingers traced the bones of his face, bringing relief to the harm inflicted there.

She stood before him, that smile upon her face. The filigree of grey that had run through her hair back in the Tower was gone.
It was all black now, except for the tones of red, like peonies scattered on some Loire hillside.

Anne Boleyn raised the hand again, let the six fingers move over him, feeling out his hurt, a balm where they touched. The
arm they had broken was knit again, the leg also. When she joined his ribs, his breathing came clear for the first time in
days, and he breathed deeply, inhaling her summer-tinged fragrance.

‘They have wronged you, Jean,’ she said, a deeper darkness in her eyes.

‘Oh, my Lady,’ he replied. ‘That does not compare to the wrong I have done you.’

‘What wrong?’

‘My failure. Your enemies have taken what you entrusted to me, what I swore to defend. Your cause is lost.’

She leant into him, laid each of her hands on either side of his head, as she had done that night. ‘Did you not say “while
I am alive I will not give up hope”?’

He smiled at that, for hope had left him some days before, as he heard his body break.

Her smile matched his. ‘This should tell you something, Jean Rombaud. It reminds you of
my
promise, the one I made you on the scaffold: “We two shall meet again.” And not just in a dream.’

She was gone then, and the sunlight left with her. Chased away, perhaps, by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

As well as the brazier, carried on metal poles by the Tuscans, two lanterns were brought in now. Heinrich held one, the Archbishop
the other. When Jean saw him, his defiance wavered a little. The man knew too much about pain.

The cleric came up to him, raising the lantern to study the results of his last efforts.

‘It’s interesting.’ The silky voice spread over him, a cough followed by the raising of a handkerchief to dab at lips. ‘What
one man can bear that another would have already died from. Thresholds, eh? An interesting word. Limits, and things to cross
over, both. You and I have witnessed many cross the threshold between this life and the life to come, haven’t we, Executioner?
I can never experience that moment enough, can you?’

Jean was silent, giving his enemy nothing.

‘How fitting that we will share it now. You will know more about it than me, alas for you. Though I am sure you crave release
from this life, do you not? Are you ready to cross the threshold? Your journey from one hell to another is about to begin.’

Cibo’s cough, the red marker on the cloth, gave Jean another weapon of words, his last perhaps. Through broken teeth, he chose
each word with care.

‘It is true I know something of death. I have seen it written on a thousand faces. Yet I have never seen it so clearly as
it is written on the face before me now. I may precede you to the flames, but you will burn beside me soon enough.’

The Archbishop did not speak at first, and such little colour as he had vanished. He coughed, and a cloth raised too late
failed to prevent the blood seeping down his chin. He turned away, mastered himself, turned back, a smile again in place.

‘We don’t need you any more, Executioner. Apollonius has decided he doesn’t require your information after all. The secret,
he believes, lies in the actual flesh of that accursed hand. I suspected as much, the way its touch so affected me. So we
will treat it with mercury, slice it, open it up. Especially that extra finger. He believes the core of power lies there.
Harnessed, and who knows? I may yet deprive you of your companion of the flames.’

Jean laughed. It was an absurd sound coming from a man hanging broken on a wall, and in a fury Cibo snapped, ‘I
made the mistake of letting you live once. I shall now take the greatest pleasure in watching you die.’ Turning to his bodyguard,
he added, ‘Let’s see how slowly we can make that happen, Heinrich.’

The German wrapped a cloth around his hand and picked up a knife that had been resting on the coals of the brazier.

‘Shall I begin, my Lord?’

A nod, and the knife was borne forward. Instinctively, Jean shut his eyes, raised his head, tried to think of Tuscany, of
Beck. He felt the heat approaching his flesh …

There was a tentative knocking at the door. The blade was removed a little, and Jean opened his eyes again to see Giovanni
standing in the doorway. The steward gazed in fascination at the suspended, bloodied man, the words he’d come to speak lost.

‘Well, fool?’ Heinrich bellowed at him.

‘The … the … the entertainer is here my … my Lord.’

‘What entertainer? Ah, ah yes …’ Cibo turned to his bodyguard. ‘Giovanni thinks he has found some Italian whore to dance Salome
of the Seven Veils for me, then satisfy me afterwards. Well, she’ll have to wait. We will not be long, I think.’ He paused
as Giovanni turned reluctantly in the doorway and the blade once more approached. ‘No, stop.’ A smile came to the reddened
lips. ‘I am forgetting, Heinrich. Pleasure protracted is pleasure twice as keen. The same goes for pain, of course. Let us
leave our friend here to anticipate his final mortification a little longer. His dying will be all the sweeter when I have
had the – how shall I say it? – the little death this whore will give me. And since Franchetto has gone into the night with
his men, I shall not even have to share her. Only if you care to, my dear Heinrich?’

The German stiffened and walked to replace the weapon on the coals.

‘I will watch over you, my Lord, as always, and that is all.’

‘Really, Heinrich. Will you never learn? Pleasure and pain, my friend. Pleasure and pain.’

They left the brazier, and its heat filled the little cell, the first Jean had felt in he knew not how long. He was grateful
for it, and the light as well. It made shadows move against the walls and in them his companions seemed content to sit and
wait for him to die.

Haakon couldn’t help but stare. His vision was obstructed by the narrow eye slits of the mask, so he needed to turn his head
from side to side to see all of her.

Her! This is what was so hard to accept. It was the same person he’d glanced at a thousand times. And it was not the same.
How could he ever have thought Beck anything other than a woman? A lovely one too, small but well shaped at breast, a slim
waist, and features of face which, when seen in the context of womanhood, were not unpleasing. Not that he could see them
all now. A veil covered them, rosy-hued like the others draping her. They did not fully conceal, they hinted at a desired
revelation. One at each breast, one for each leg, a partial skirt over the hips. Under that he could just make out the darker
patch of cloth that lay at the source of the most womanly part of her, held there by a taut silken cord. The seventh veil.

He had to look away. The black hair of his wig spilled out from under his headsman’s mask, making him itch wherever it touched.
She said it concealed him in some way. It annoyed him in many. He scratched vigorously. They had made him leave his axe in
the corridor outside the room, otherwise his hands would have been occupied.

‘Stop it!’ Beck hissed at him. ‘You’re like a bear in a beehive. You’re meant to stay unnoticed. They won’t watch me with
you doing St Vitus’ dance.’

‘Well, your wig hasn’t got fleas!’ he hissed back, still scratching.

Beck sighed and struck a pose, leg out, a bare foot reaching from beneath the silk. It had been an offcut, but it had still
cost her most of Giovanni’s advance, yielding just enough
material to make the costume. She was never sure about women’s clothes, but Haakon’s lascivious then embarrassed reaction
showed it was probably all right. Yet now she was standing there in that small, cold room, the enthusiasm that had swept her
forward was gone, replaced by doubt and fear.

She tried a move to the left, raising and banging down her timbrel on a knee, its taut skin drawn over a half-moon frame,
the small metal links giving out the only music she would have, apart from the jingle of tiny bells at her ankles. The move
was clumsy, awkward, not enticing in the least – and she had to entice beyond the fantasies of any man! Why did she ever think
she could do this? Because she danced well the dances of her people? Those movements were restrained, eyes cast down, demure.
They were not the movements of a Salome.

Voices came from outside the door, and when it opened all considerations of performance disappeared in the shock of being
in the same room as her enemy. Her hands instinctively reached for a weapon that was not there, and she saw Haakon cease his
scratching and slip a hand to his side, twitching for the reassurance of an axe.

This is the moment,
she thought.
They will see through these thin veils, not to the woman but to the body of their foe. They will pierce the Norseman’s disguise
,
call their guards, we will be overpowered, then subjected to the same horror they have been inflicting on Jean. This moment,
now, as Giancarlo Cibo walks in, coughs, raises his handkerchief to his lips, sees …

‘Ah, Salome.’ There was a trace of liquid in the voice. ‘You I recognise, Princess. But who is your friend?’

She was not Rebecca, daughter of Abraham, nor Beck, the boy warrior. She was an Italian whore who enticed with a dance. She
was Salome. She had lived with disguises all her life. And she had watched men watch women.

‘Your Eminence.’ In her low curtsey, she made sure the
loose-fitting veils around her breasts slipped forward. ‘Every Salome needs an executioner. How else am I to take the reward
for my dance – the head of John the Baptist?’