The French Executioner (37 page)

So when he ran back to them, ears flattened against his skull, the hair on his neck and along his spine raised as if by a
brush, when he crouched behind his master’s horse and gave out a continuous low growl, everyone shifted in their saddles and
reached out to feel the comfort of their weapons.

‘Hedge knights, you think?’ Jean said softly to the man beside him.

The Fugger touched his fingers to his stump. The very naming of that particularly German variety of highwayman made it ache
in memory.

‘It’s possible. We crossed the border into Bavaria about six hours back, by my reckoning. We are within the territory.’

‘My Fenrir is not frightened of a bunch of disinherited noblemen.’ Haakon had descended to comfort his dog. ‘Look at him.
Something he’s seen or sensed has terrified him.’

Fenrir stood, growling still, hackles raised, despite his master’s strokes.

‘What lies ahead, Fugger, do you know?’ Januc had taken the precaution of stringing his bow.

‘If my memory serves, a small town called Marsheim. It has a famous abbey, and an abbot equally famous for his love of vice.
The sort of man who gave the Catholics such a bad name here in Germany, who prompted our holy monk Luther to his holy rebellion.’

As soon as he had crossed the border of a German state, the Fugger had begun to feel like a Protestant again.

‘The sort of place our Archbishop could well desire to rest for the night,’ observed Jean.

‘What do you think?’ Haakon was scratching Fenrir behind the ears. ‘Shall we heed my hound’s warning? Set up camp here, go
in and scout at dawn, as usual?’

Jean felt their eyes upon him; another decision expected. With each one taken it had become a little easier. Advice he always
heeded, even from the dog; but, after debate, the final choice was his. He’d insisted they wait when they had first caught
up with Cibo’s party a week before in an Austrian forest, not go charging in at dead of night as Haakon, especially, desired.
Three weeks struggling in high mountain passes summer seemed not to have reached, forcing their way through snow drifts at
times, had exhausted them all. He had even let their quarry gain a few days’ lead again, when Januc was struck with an ailment
of the guts and could not ride. The enemy had at least fifty men-at-arms and he needed all his comrades. Also, as strong as
the pull of the hand was, Jean was aware just how lucky he had been so far. He had survived a gibbet and a galley. To rush
into an armed camp, even while most of them slept, was challenging fate too far. Besides, he had the distinct feeling it was
exactly what Cibo wanted.

He had another reason to keep his skin in one piece: Beck had promised to kiss every inch of it when she met them at the rendezvous
in Munster, the Fugger’s family town. As long as it was unblemished by wound.

His thoughts were interrupted by an agitated cawing.
Daemon, who had been resting quietly on his master’s shoulders, suddenly rose up into the air, flapped twice and flew swiftly
ahead.

‘Carrion,’ murmured the Fugger. ‘My Daemon has a nose for things that are dead.’

Jean’s mind was made up. ‘We’ll heed the animals, yet proceed a little further. Maybe what has so upset our Fenrir and lured
our raven will become clear to us too.’

The party moved on, down the long avenue of beech trees sheltering the road. The sun was sinking into the west, giving them
ample light to see the ruts made by the Archbishop’s carriage the day before.

‘There’s a ridge up ahead,’ said the Fugger. ‘I think it overlooks the abbey, and beyond that lies the town.’

Before they gained the viewpoint, three things happened to halt them.

Firstly, the wind change Daemon had first noticed now gusted down upon them from the direction in which they were headed.
It brought with it, faintly but unmistakably, the sound of screaming. Secondly, a bell began to ring, but not in the regular
way of summons or warning. It struck once, then once again, then three times quickly. There followed a silence. Then from
a different bell, one single toll.

‘A curious way they have with bells, these Bavarians,’ said Januc. ‘What—’

He never got to ask his question because at that moment the third thing happened and it ended all conversation for a while.

A cat, a big, brindled tom, appeared on the road ahead. Fenrir growled but needed no restraint from Haakon to hold back. The
cat was moving strangely, dragging its hips along the ground as if its back were broken – which it wasn’t, for it then leapt
up, skittered a few feet forward on four paws, then flopped and resumed its sideways slide, mewing all the while.

Behind it came a black and white dog, a town cur. It seemed to be in pursuit of the wounded cat but then ran past
it and towards their horses. It halted just before them, and this time Fenrir needed to be restrained from launching an attack;
but then, ignoring them completely, the dog ran to the side and began to assault a rock there. Snarling in frenzy, it hurled
itself onto it, attempting to bite it, to prise it from its position with scrabbling paws. The dog’s mouth filled with blood,
teeth were spat out, claws ripped off; still it continued with an overwhelming ferocity. Finally, it threw back its bloodied
muzzle and howled, then ran, slipping onto its side twice before disappearing into the woods.

The cat, meanwhile, had just laid down.

‘Dead.’ Haakon had descended to pick up the body. ‘Poor thing.’

Fenrir whined and nuzzled at his master’s hand.

‘Do we go on, Jean?’ the Fugger said, hoping for a no.

‘I think we must.’ Jean dismounted. ‘But slowly. Let’s take a look from your ridge.’

It was up there they found their second body. Human, this time.

Daemon’s caws drew their eyes to it; he was quarrelling with a crow in a linden tree. The corpse was wedged between two branches,
on the rise just off the road. The man, it seemed, had tried to climb higher and had fallen back, because an undershirt flapped
a dozen feet above him. At the base of the tree, a monk’s cassock lay, torn in half. The body was naked, and cruelly marked
with gouges. Januc climbed up to have a closer look.

‘There’s flesh under all his nails and his hands are covered in blood,’ he called down. ‘The fall probably killed him for
his back looks broken. But …’ He hesitated. ‘But it might have been a blessed release. I think … I think he was trying to
rip his own skin off.’

‘Holy Father,’ whispered the Fugger, ‘what madness is this?’

Jean pushed his way through the knee-high bracken of the ridge, the others following. When they reached the point
where the slope began to descend and they could see into the valley, they gathered to look down. The foliage did not completely
obscure the view.

‘My eyes are not so good for distance.’ Jean turned to his companions. ‘Does anyone have the long sight?’

Haakon put a foot on the low branches of an oak. ‘I grew up eating little but fish. Fish is good for the eyes, my mother always
said.’ He hoisted himself swiftly up the tree, agile despite his size, gazed down, ducking this way and that around the branches.
‘I see a walled enclosure, gardens within it, a big stone house at the centre.’

‘That would be the monastery,’ the Fugger called up. ‘Are the monks there?’

‘I do not see … wait, there is some movement. Some men moving around a garden. They seem … they seem to be dancing. And there’s
some smoke rising further on.’

The wind eddied around the ridge. They each caught a faint trace of laughter borne on it. There was an odd quality to it,
as if it lacked all humour.

‘The town is beyond, is it not, Fugger?’ Jean asked.

‘It is.’

‘Haakon, come down. If the town’s afire too we may not have much time. Let us go and see what is happening there.’

With some dread, they mounted and began the descent. But if they were reluctant, Fenrir nearly refused to move. Only a stern
command from Haakon got the beast going, and even then it slunk along at the rear of its master’s horse, hair standing up,
whimpering.

The light rain that had pattered intermittently upon them most of the day turned heavy as they approached the monastery. From
a distance it seemed the gates were open; but drawing near they saw that one of the huge, iron-studded panels lay flat on
the ground and the other hung off just one hinge. Under the end that reached the ground lay a man, squirming, naked, his hands
pinned as if he had tried to catch the gate as it fell.

Jean, Januc and Haakon together just managed to raise the gate long enough for the Fugger to drag the weeping monk clear.
They cut some strips from a nearby cassock and bound his mangled hands. While they did this he gradually ceased weeping, his
eyes searching the sky.

When they were done, he leant towards the Fugger and whispered, ‘Beware, Brother. The Devil has loosed his flames upon the
world. St Anthony’s Fire has come, and now is Doomsday near. Unless I shut them out.’

With that the monk rose up and tried to put his crushed fingers once more under the hanging gate, and nothing that the Fugger
attempted to say or do could draw his attention away from the task.

Jean, on hearing these words, had stood a little apart. He had gone so pale that Haakon came to him and touched his arm.

‘What is it?’

‘St Anthony’s Fire.’

‘Do not take the words of a madman seriously. He is possessed of an ogre, a demon, that is all.’

Jean looked up at the other man. ‘It is not all. He will only be one of many. When St Anthony’s Fire takes a town, all are
taken, all possessed. It happened to the next village to ours, when I was a child. It destroyed the place. Half the people
died. The other half went mad. Barely one in three was exorcised.’

‘Wait.’ The Fugger joined them. ‘I too have heard of this. Whole villages deranged, cursed with visions of hell, perishing
in flames only they can see. Yet people coming from outside the village are not caught up by it. They can only witness the
effect of the curse, not share the horror.’

Januc had left the bandaging to the others and had been looking within the walls. He came out just in time to hear the Fugger’s
words.

‘That is not entirely true,’ he said. ‘In parts of Turkey there have been similar massings of Djinn, the Screaming Demons.
They speak of flames and other horrors. It is said the demons enter the body through the mouth, from the air, from bread or
water. So, my friends, keep your mouths shut tight. Wrap a cloth about your face, breathe through your noses only. But do
not eat or drink while we are here. And talk as little as you can.’ He watched each of them as they cut further strips from
the cassock and placed them around their faces, then added, ‘Follow me. There are other things you must see.’

Pulling weapons from their sheaths, they entered the enclosure. Inside the gate, the Archbishop’s carriage they had seen from
certain vantage points along the way stood abandoned. One of the leather straps that had suspended the litter above the chassis
to lessen jolting had been cut, and it leant over at a strange angle. Someone had tried to hitch up the horses and failed,
for two waited half-tied in the traces while two more stood in a nearby carrot patch, munching. Beyond, the gardens were laid
out in huge beds sweeping back to the main house, a stone island in the vegetable sea. Bodies were dotted around each one,
some naked, some clothed; in one, the three monks Haakon had first seen from the ridge were still dancing, trampling their
seedlings into the earth. Laughter mingled with the sounds of weeping. Smoke rose from the outlying buildings to greet the
rain, but none from the monastery itself which, as they approached its entrance-way, was silent.

‘This is as far as I came,’ Januc said. ‘It doesn’t smell right beyond here. Smell!’

All four raised their masked faces.

‘Ugh!’ Haakon turned away and spat. ‘What is that?’

‘It smells of … of mice,’ said Jean.

‘Mice, certainly. And – stale piss.’ The Fugger shuddered. ‘And you think we should enter here?’

‘Jesu save me, for I burn!’

This cry of anguish burst from the silence of the darkened hallway. Immediately, a score of other voices began to shriek,
as if the first voice had been their cue.

‘Shall we descend into Hades, my lords?’ Januc’s grey eyes twinkled above the brown cloth over his mouth.

‘Cibo’s carriage lies abandoned. He’s either in the village or in here,’ Jean replied, raising his voice above the wailing.
‘So I’m going in.’

His sword poised before him, Jean entered, the others close behind. The hallway was low-ceilinged and dark, the murky light
of a day’s end dissipating into the stone-flagged floor and the oak panelling of the walls. A staircase ran ahead of them
up into the gloom. On either side were doors, one open, one closed. Beyond the shut one to the left could be heard a steady
repetition, as of someone counting. Through the gap of the half-opened door the screams poured.

Using the square end of his sword, Jean pushed the door wide. At first, the gloom intensified, then shapes could be discerned,
moving around as if in a mist. Suddenly, one ran at them, gibbering. Jean ducked the heavy gold censer the monk was swinging
like a mace at the end of its chain. It crashed into the wall beside him, exploding in a cloud of sweetness, of sandalwood
and frankincense, temporarily overpowering the stench of mice and urine that was thickest in this chamber. Jean stepped to
the side and, as the monk, screaming, tried to raise the wrecked censer, slapped him hard on the side of his head with the
flat of the blade. He collapsed at Jean’s feet.

The wailing in the chamber doubled. Peering in, the company was able to make out – on every surface, thrust into corners,
hovering by the fireplace – men, garbed and un-garbed, beating themselves and each other with bare hands, tearing out chunks
of hair. All in the room were tonsured, and thus in monk’s orders. Of the party of Siena there was no trace.

Closing the door behind them diminished the wailing, and Jean led the party to the other side of the hallway. Beyond that
closed door they could still hear the regular chanting of a single voice. As they hesitated before this door, they could
make out the same words being repeated over and over: ‘Here I stand, King of the Jews. I can do no other, King of the Jews.’