The French Executioner (3 page)

‘What are you doing with those bones?’

The keeper started, as if he’d forgotten his prisoner was there.

‘Soup,’ he muttered without turning around. ‘Do you believe me?’

‘No.’ Jean shifted in the cage. ‘Why would you want old bone soup when you have such fresh meat hanging by?’

The keeper made a snuffling sound that Jean realised was laughter.

‘Is that what you want? A swift release provided by my little trusty here?’ He patted a small scabbard at his side. ‘But that
would be a sin – isn’t that what your friend the Archbishop would say? Ooh …’ He broke off and gazed up at Jean. ‘An archbishop,
eh? What illustrious senders-off you had. We don’t usually get such company here. Why should you interest His Holiness, I
wonder?’

Affecting calm, Jean said, ‘Why were they interested in me? Oh, now there’s a story.’

The keeper stopped scrabbling and tipped his head to one side, bones and skull cradled in his arms.

‘A story?’

‘Aye. I heard you say you like a story over supper. Well, there’s a tale in me, if you choose to hear it.’

‘Oh, yes, we do like stories, Daemon and I. Do you speak any Raven? No matter, he speaks some French and, of course, German.
Don’t you, beloved?’

The raven swooped down upon the crossbeam, opened its beak and said, ‘Save the eyes! Save the eyes!’

‘You see! And I can translate the rest. We would like to hear your tale.’

Jean forced a smile. ‘And what price do you offer for this night’s entertainment?’

‘Some food, some wine, and a swift good night if you so choose. But only if your tale pleases us.’

‘I do not drink bone soup.’

‘And neither do we,’ the keeper cried. ‘Do you think the Fugger has lost all his civility? I have eaten off silver trenchers
in my time. And now I have cold root stew. I have wine. I may even have some old, old bread.’

‘A meal, then a swift passage from one hell to another? That is not a fair return for this story.’

‘And what would young Orpheus want? Nothing less than your lover back from Hades, I presume?’

‘Oh no, nothing like that.’ Jean leant his face against the slats. ‘Only the chance to carry on the story.’

White eyes flashed at him from the darkness.

‘You mean, this story has no ending? The Fugger hates stories that don’t end. Hates them! All stories must have an ending,
and all endings must be sad.’

‘Well, that will be for you to judge. You can make it end the way you want. For you are in it, and Daemon too.’

‘You hear that, Daemon? A story that includes us. This we must hear.’

‘A bargain, then. If my story pleases, you will set me free to continue it, for this story is so powerful it cannot be allowed
to die here with me. If it does not … well, maybe I’ll take some of your wine and a little relief from that friend you keep
at your side. Is it a bargain?’

The Fugger leapt up from a squat, grabbed the cage and thrust an arm through the bars to support himself. He hung there, swinging,
causing the metal hook to grate in its socket. His face was matted with filth, but within that grime eyes shone out in the
moonlight. They fixed on Jean now, and a whisper came.

‘A bargain made! But know this, young Orpheus. Daemon and I, we have heard all the tragedies, yes we have, seen a hundred
men and more wedged in where you are now. Every one with a story of love lost, murder unavenged, maidenheads plundered, and
not one has ever gone free. Not a single one. Daemon thinks I would listen to his tale from our Lord’s own mouth and, like
Pilate, wash my hands.’ The eyes lowered and he continued softly, ‘Maybe he’s right. So far am I sunk in sin, so great my
degradation.’

He dropped down then and crouched, muttering, on the midden, reaching into its filth and scrabbling around until
there emerged from within it an encrusted flagon and a sack. He uncorked the bottle with his teeth, drank, spat out something,
drank again.

‘So sing us your song, young Orpheus, pluck at our hearts. But beware! We like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.
A proper story. And then, who knows? Do you understand the challenge?’

‘I do,’ Jean replied. ‘And if I finish my tale and the key is not in the lock a moment later, may God have mercy on both our
souls.’

‘Amen,’ sighed the Fugger, stretching out on the midden, settling himself into the soft earth to hear the tale.

But how to tell it? Jean thought, hopelessness growing within him with the creeping dawn light. A story told to a madman and
his bird through the bars of an iron coffin, an impossible tale of the killing of a queen and a last request to her killer
to do an impossible thing. A sane audience would think him mad; a mad audience … well, perhaps it was the only one that could
think him sane.

He wondered where to begin. At his lodgings in St Omer, stubbornly sober despite the endless wine, receiving the summons?
With an explanation of why he was chosen, his skill with the executioner’s sword?

He was not good with words, his trade rarely required them. But then, suddenly, it came to him. Once upon a happy time he’d
lulled his precious daughter, Ariel, to sleep with little stories. She’d always liked them best when they were simple and
true in the telling. So, taking a deep breath, he began.

Mist encased the small boat and, along with water like spoiled milk, seemed to force against the bow, preventing swift progress
to their landing. The boatman was as reluctant as his vessel, muttering warding words against the witching hour and this midnight
mission. Jean thought limbo must feel this way: body and will suspended, approaching a place one could never quite reach.

When they did, even he, who rarely made the gesture, aped the boatman and crossed himself. He had spent much of his life in
such places, his trade demanded it: prisons and the cells within them where light never reached, where there was only the
stench of the doomed, the cries of the despairing. But this fortress! All the evil and unhealth of a realm seemed to be lodged
within it. It squatted over the water like some giant, venomous toad, and as they passed under the walls Jean felt he was
being sucked into its maw.

‘The Bloody Tower!’ the boatman muttered, crossing himself again. Languages were useful to a mercenary and Jean had picked
up enough English on campaign to understand both meanings.

The boat, entering under a portcullis raised slowly ahead of them, scraped against a wooden dock where the boatman paused
just long enough for Jean and his meagre baggage to be placed ashore before pushing off, eagerly seeking the open water, never
looking back. Unseen hands had raised the iron
grille and now let it drop. Jean knew he was expected, but he was still left there long enough for a deeper chill to settle
within him, while the water lapped against the dock, seeming to speak in various tongues, echoing in the low roof overhead.

Eventually, there were heavy boots on stone, metal jangled, and flickering light barely pierced the gloom.

‘Rombaud?’

‘Monsieur.’

‘Follow me.’

The phantom officer led Jean through a maze of passages and finally up a long spiral staircase. The room at the top dazzled
with its sudden light, its warmth. He’d been expecting no more luxury than a palliasse in the corner of a cell or a nest under
the scaffold. Here there was a truckle bed, a good fire snapping in the grate and a sheepskin on the stone floor, even some
wine, bread and cheese on a table.

‘I am grateful, Monsieur,’ he said to the officer he now saw to be a tall, sandy-haired Englishman whose voice had seemed
to come from someone far older.

‘Tucknell is my name and all this is not my doing,’ the man replied in that French the English always seemed to use, entirely
without song. ‘You may thank the Queen—’ He broke off and flushed in a way that revealed his youth still more. ‘I mean, Anne,
your … she’s no longer Queen, of course, as you know, or you wouldn’t be …’ He paused, then looked down and added, ‘Wouldn’t
be here, I suppose.’

Caught out by this unexpected emotion – he really was no more than a boy – the officer made to leave. Jean stopped him with
a raised hand.

‘Monsieur, would you be so kind – when am I to meet my client?’

Startled by the word, Tucknell looked at the executioner as if for the first time.

‘In the morning, after her prayers. It is … you will do your work the morning after.’

A nod, and he was gone.

Jean ate and drank. The wine was excellent – it had been heated and flavoured with honey and some unknown herb. The sheepskin
rug was more comfortable than the bed and it could be pulled closer to the fire. Wrapped in his cloak, surprised by this good
fortune, he swiftly fell into a deep sleep. It was largely dreamless until near dawn, when someone seemed to be dragging him
down a dank corridor. There was something unsettling in the grip and when he awoke the hand he’d been pulled by ached.

Tucknell brought him some food and small beer soon after, then returned to lead him back down those twisting stairs and out
into the light.

It was the laughter he heard first. Then he saw her, in a patch of bright sunlight, emerging from a chapel, leaning on the
arm of a priest, four ladies in attendance. It was no distance across the small lawn and Jean’s reaction, as always in this
situation, was practical. He studied her neck, clearly visible in the low-cut dress she wore.

Long, slender, no trouble there, of a strength that would almost have suited a man better. Her hair was thick, a horse’s mane
of it barely tamed by the French hood that held it. It was of a lustrous black, though with silver threaded through like filigree.
Its length would be a problem for his sword and he reminded himself to suggest a coif.

So far, he had allowed his professionalism to rule, but now curiosity overcame him. This was a queen, after all, who had gathered
legends about her even Jean Rombaud of St Omer had heard. Ballads were sung of her beauty, of eyes that could melt the stone
of statues and a body to make angels yearn for earthly life. Yet to Jean, across the green was a tall, thin woman with greying
hair who showed her more than thirty years and the toll they’d taken, the daughter she’d given birth to and those babes she’d
lost in her struggle to produce a male heir for her King and husband.

So this is the temptress who has led a good Catholic prince
to break with the Church he loved?
Jean thought.
This, the second Eve who has caused such a schism between heaven and earth?

He felt a slight itch of disappointment, then remembered: he was there to do a job, nothing more. A swift introduction, the
usual mix of terror and embarrassment, a swifter dismissal. He would see her only once more, through the slits of a headsman’s
mask. He would do well what he was well paid to do and he would be gone on the next flood tide. His reputation enhanced by
the quality of the head he had taken, he would be able to up his fees, future clients flattered at the attentions of the Queen’s
Own Executioner.

And what will you do with all the extra gold?
he asked himself briefly as the entourage approached across a lawn suddenly cooler with the disappearance of the sun. She
was still leaning on the arm of her confessor, who was trying to look solemn but failing, walking with him across to where
Jean and Tucknell waited.

When she turned to them, even as Jean was bending his knee, he glanced up and saw them! Eyes of such intensity, pools of immaculate
blackness, sinking to unimaginable depths. Within the deeper darkness of one of them the pupil was slightly offset, as if
there were a question there, while an answer awaited in the other. All this he saw in one brief glimpse, a lightning blast
so powerful he faltered as he sank and was grateful for the knee pressed to the damp turf.

Beside him, Tucknell knelt and then rose, stuttering Jean’s name in his flat French, failing to find the correct title, dubbing
him ‘Slaughterer’ as if his trade was in cattle. Laughter vanished as the sun had and Jean waited, head bent, for them to
quell their emotions while he tried to quell his. He knew this moment well, was used to waiting some time. Yet he was to be
surprised again. Firstly by the voice, the deep richness of it, like cream clotting in the pails on his father’s farm.

‘Oh no,’ said Anne Boleyn, ‘his title is Doctor, for he has
come to spare me pain. Honour him as you would every man of science.’ The French was as flawless as the sentiment.

A hand reached out. Jean took it and bent his head to kiss it. A hand much like any other noble lady’s. Delicate, flushed
like a musk rose, nails like perfect half moons, with neither blemish nor wrinkle, mole nor scar to disfigure the beauty of
it. It also had six fingers. He had forgotten this one legend among her many. And because he had forgotten he was startled,
and reacted with an oath from his native valley, an obscure one concerning the unusual habits of farmers and their pigs.

Silence again, with Jean aghast. His meetings with his clients were usually brief, formal; they were embarrassed or defiant,
he was polite, calming. Here, he had acted improperly and he coloured with the shame of it. Dismissal awaited. Disgrace.

But this silence was short-lived because into it came a laugh from the belly. ‘I have not heard that … phrase in a very long
time,’ she said, her laughter seeming to draw the sun back from behind the clouds. ‘I … oh, forgive me! I spent many, many
happy summers in the Loire, is that not where you are from?’

Jean nodded, still too distracted to speak.

‘Not from Calais, then?’

Jean cleared his throat, spoke without looking up. ‘I live in St Omer, Majesty, in the Pas de Calais. But I grew up in the
Loire.’

She studied him for a long moment. He kept his eyes lowered.

‘Well then, we
do
have a lot to talk about, dear Doctor. Will you honour me with your conversation if I promise no more little jokes? You would
have thought I would be tired of that one by now, but it’s not often I find someone who can still be tricked by it. Ah well!
Please, forgive me and walk with me?’