The French Executioner (41 page)

It came, Alice’s high-pitched, juddery squeal. Since she had always been the favourite, Alice normally received the least
of the beatings. Not this morning, though. Her mother, and Marlena, the old nurse, winced at each of the three blows and again
at the roaring that followed.

‘Get out! Get out! You slut! Would you drive me mad?’

The door of the master’s room flew open and a squealing Alice was pitched out. She fell, all sharp bones and shuddering breaths,
at the feet of her mother, who stooped to comfort and enfold her, to bend her own frail body over this, her youngest, her
only remaining child.

Glancing up, avoiding his eyes, Gerta pleaded. ‘Cornelius, dearest, what stupidity has Alice committed now? Oh, you bad, bad
girl!’ The voice chastised, but the way she rocked her child comforted. Her husband was terribly short-sighted, after all.

He stood in the doorframe that once he would have filled. He may have lost a third of his bodyweight during the privations
of the siege but he had lost none of his swift anger. Rather the reverse.

‘That slut we have raised,’ he shouted, ‘speaks to me again about marriage. About becoming the third strumpet to be kept by
that buffoon, Thaddeus. A Fugger marrying a tanner is ridiculous enough. Becoming nothing better than a whore is another thing
altogether.’

Alice, the indulged child in whom Cornelius’s temper most often manifested itself, spoke angrily through her tears. ‘But he
is one of the Twelve! He has the King’s ear! If he does not protect me, the King may marry me off to any old butcher!’

Her mother’s arms were inadequate protection from Cornelius’s blows.

‘Jezebel! How dare you speak to me of a king? That … tailor! I will keep you safe, I, Cornelius Albrecht Fugger. You are mine
to dispose of. Mine, do you hear? And when this madness is over, and order restored, I will marry you to the ugliest, oldest
butcher I please! As long as he has some gold left to pay for you!’

The effort had exhausted him, and he stepped back, bent down to rest his hands on his knees.

‘Now, get her out of my sight. Get her out!’

Mother and daughter scurried off to the safety of the kitchen, where Marlena applied damp cloths and soothing words. It failed
to stem the weeping for quite a while.

‘Why can’t he see?’ Alice sobbed. ‘Look at me! I am becoming ugly, old. My teeth are rotting, my hair falling out. No one
will want me. I don’t care if I am Thaddeus’s third wife, or his fifth, at least I will have a husband. Before it’s too late.
Ohhhh!’

Cornelius had slammed the door to his room, but because so much of the interior wood had been stripped out for fires and fortifications
he could still hear the sobbing. His hands itched to reach up to the beam, get down the hazel switch he kept there and beat
and beat until there were no sounds but the beating. But he knew he didn’t have the strength for it. He was getting old, and
the disasters of recent years had made him age quickly, what with the starvation and his turn on the
battlements. They actually expected him to fight! He, Cornelius Fugger, the man most lacking in violence in the whole city!

His family, that was all he cared about, and they treated him in this manner? First his son running off with two years’ worth
of profit, now his daughter wanting to marry … a tanner? Well, he had taken better care of them than they had of him; it would
all be proved eventually, when the lunatics were overthrown and order was restored. Oh, he had taken great care.

He went to the fireplace, with its long-dead ashes, and carefully shifted a stone from the wall, placing it on the ground
beside him. Raising a candle, even his poor eyes could see the glimmer of the gold coins piled up in the niche. Three years’
worth of trading before the madness began. Ready for the restoration of the illustrious name of Fugger to its rightful place
in Munster.

A scratching at the door had him hastily replacing the stone. He turned and barked, ‘Go away!’

His wife’s voice came timidly. ‘But Cornelius, dear husband, the meeting.’

He had forgotten. Another cursed gathering of the Elect, the so-called ‘Tribes of Israel’, in the square. More apocalyptic
lunacy! His contempt for it knew no bounds. But no one could stay away. No one who wanted to live.

‘All right, I am coming,’ he said. ‘And tell that slattern daughter of mine to wear her oldest dress. She will not flirt with
the whoremasters who run our city!’

There was only one good thing about the meetings – the punishments. Everything seemed to be a crime these days, punishable
by death or maiming at the least: lewd conduct, blasphemy, hoarding. Even scolding one’s parents.

Cornelius chuckled.
Maybe that’s what I should do. Testify to Alice’s shameful behaviour this morning, her disrespect. See how much Thaddeus the
tanner will want her when they’ve chopped off her nose!

There was another benefit to these meetings in the square. If the punishments continued at the present rate there would be
no one left able-bodied enough to man the walls, and deliverance, by the Bishop and the Prince, would be assured.

In the great square of Munster, beneath the eaves of St Lambert’s, under the sightless gaze of the dozen latest traitors to
the Word whose heads adorned its crenellations, the twelve tribes of Israel Reborn had gathered to greet their king.

Jean and the Fugger waited with the rest, surrounded by their captors, two dozen beggars who lived in the rafters of ruins
no one else would consider. They had seized the two men and bound them swiftly. They had taken their weapons and searched
their bags. Yet they had not touched one mouthful of their food.

‘All belongs to everyone, and everyone shall partake of all,’ the scab-faced leader had told him when the Fugger tried to
bribe him to let them go with a promise of more food. ‘We will bring it to the meeting.’

And as they waited, their captors paraded them with pride, explaining to the curious how they, beggars though they were, had
played such a part in the defence of the city.

‘Snuck over in the attack last night, Brother,’ one explained to an onlooker. ‘Spies come to bring us to ruin. But the Lord
set us to watch in that place and he has delivered our enemies into our hands!’

‘I keep trying to tell you, er, Brother.’ The Fugger attempted again to speak. ‘We come to offer our help. This man is a great
warrior … ach!’

The leader pulled back his hand to strike again. ‘I told you to keep quiet! Our King will decide. He has a powerful way of
sorting the lies from the truth.’

Before the Fugger could risk another blow, trumpets blasted from the entrance of the church and the crowd swept forward to
the raised platform, bearing the two prisoners in their midst. As the first trumpet blasts faded, twelve figures
emerged from the church to the slow beat of a solitary drum. Each wore the robes that all had seen in frescoes on the walls
of churches and cathedrals of the land, the robes of the elders of Israel: long, of glorious hues, purple and gold, sweeping
to the ground. Each one’s head was covered in a shroud of pure white linen, each clutched a shepherd’s stave in one hand and
a corn flail in the other. They fanned out, six to each side, and stood at the front of the platform.

As the last of them parted, behind them was revealed a person who made all gasp and begin to whisper each to the other. She
was in a simple shift that covered her to her bare feet. Her long hair was piled up in a bundle on her head and her eyes were
cast down, seeming to focus only on the hands tied before her.

She is beautiful.
A vision of Anne Boleyn came to Jean, walking as slowly to her fate on Tower Green.
And she too is bound for execution.

Voices murmured excitedly all around. ‘The Queen, the Queen!’

The murmurs were lost in the roar that followed as another man walked out onto the platform, alone, and moved slowly towards
the crowd, without looking at the bound woman, who reached out to him as he passed. The roar filled the square, reverberated
around the town, carried even to the besiegers’ lines outside.

‘David! David! David! David! DAVID!’

Jean had noted the rich apparel of the Twelve, but this man’s clothes were sumptuous, studded with jewels that glittered in
the bright sunshine, a crown upon his head of plain gold yet with an emerald the size of a gull’s egg in the middle. The face
under it was ten years younger than the face of the youngest of the elders. A clear, unwrinkled brow, a straight nose, dark,
heavily lashed eyes. As he raised his arms, bracelets of silver flashed from them.

The movement instantly silenced the crowd. Then a voice that seemed to be made not of sound but of some exotic
essence, rich as burning sandalwood, smooth as honey, reached out to caress every ear in the square.

‘My people,’ the voice spoke gently, yet clearly, as if it were weighed down by a sorrow too great to name. ‘Oh, my people.’

The arms were lowered and the cry ‘David!’ echoed again from the arches of the cathedral. The arms were raised once more,
silver and gold flashing. The voice came again, a hardness building within it.

‘And Jeremiah spake thus, chapter thirty-three, verse five: “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will raise
up for David a righteous branch, and he shall reign as King and deal wisely and shall execute justice and righteousness in
the land.” ’

Here he paused, and seemed to look out at each individual in the crowd before continuing.

‘Am not I your David?’

‘Yes, Lord.’

‘Am not I your David?’

‘Yes, Lord, yes,’ came the reply from every hoarse throat.

‘And what shall become of the Jezebel who has betrayed me, who has been denounced by my own Elijah?’

The Elder on the extreme left raised his stave and pointed it at the bound woman. At the gesture, her legs gave way and she
sank to the floor.

The crowd spoke just two words in one voice: ‘Hang her!’

Bejewelled hands rose again, commanding instant silence.

‘No, my people, not the noose. For is it not written in Amos nine, verse ten: “All the sinners of my people shall die by the
sword”? Is it not said that the beauteous Anne, Queen of England, martyr to the cause of reform, died thus?’

It was as if Jean had been struck. He gasped. He could almost feel the hand bunch at his back as if summoned.

The crowd roared, their King raised his arms again, raised his voice, pointed at the woman and cried, ‘I, King Jan of Munster,
will be as generous as my sovereign brother Henry
of England to my Queen. Let the justice of the Lord be swift and merciful.’

He stepped aside, making way for a masked man holding a sword, almost identical to the one Jean’s captors clutched beside
him. The weeping woman was raised up on her knees. Jean saw the executioner was experienced in his craft, for he used an old
trick. Jabbing one point of the square blade into the base of the victim’s back, the head jerked up because of the sudden
pain and was off in an instant, to bounce and roll at the feet of her former husband.

And then this King-God did an extraordinary thing. He picked up the head, kissed it full on the lips, then threw it in a high
arc out into the crowd, who went crazy with delight. Then their David went to the body, slumped in a fast-expanding pool of
blood, and began to jump up and down on it.

Jean Rombaud had witnessed all manner of barbarity in his life with the sword, and participated in much of it. But at this
he turned away. Turned away and closed his eyes, reaching inside himself for some sight that would banish what he had just
seen. In that instant he knew his career as an executioner was over.

Beside him, the scab-faced man was cheering as loudly as any.

‘Who … who was that unfortunate woman?’ the Fugger was saying to him.

A cackle came. ‘Unfortunate woman? That was one of the queens, King Jan’s second wife. Had too nagging a tongue on her, so
they say. Hey, throw the head over here!’

‘Fugger,’ whispered Jean, for their faces were suddenly close together in the push of the crowd, ‘there was more sanity in
your midden.’

The Fugger was weeping openly. ‘My family is here somewhere. We must get them out.’

Once more a trumpet blast stilled the noise. The battered body was gone, no doubt to decorate some battlement as a
warning to others. The bangled arms were raised again, and Jan Bockelson, King of Munster, in a voice somewhat hoarser than
before, called out again.

‘And now, my children, your father only has three wives. It is written that four is the number of the handmaidens of David.
Who will take the place of this Jezebel, to be joined to me in a ceremony tomorrow night? Who desires that highest of honours?’

If Jean thought the example of the former Queen’s end would deter others he was wrong, for he was swept up in the surge of
women rushing towards the platform, shouting out, ‘Pick me! Pick me!’ The jostling allowed Jean to work again at the ropes
binding him, for his guards were as distracted as any. Now, in this frenzy, he broke the last of his bonds. The beggar’s leader
saw his prisoner’s hands come free and made to raise the alarm, but an elbow in the throat silenced him. Jean caught his sword
as the man fell, and swiftly sliced through the Fugger’s knots. A dozen people separated them from their bags, so Jean reluctantly
abandoned them and turned to try to force his way through the crowd.

The Fugger made no effort to follow, allowing himself to be borne wherever the crowd willed, transfixed by what he was seeing.
A woman, no more than a girl really, had been selected. As Jean turned back to tug at him, she was being lifted out from the
crowd, her hand placed in the hand of the King.

‘Come, Fugger! Quickly, man! Do you not wish to look for your family?’

‘No need.’ The one-handed man waved his stump at the platform. ‘I have found them.’

It had been seven years, and she had been a bud of a girl then, all apple cheeks and fair, coiled hair. She was thinner now,
but she hadn’t changed that much. The girl being hailed as the next Queen of Munster was undoubtedly his sister Alice.