part0006

Pierre and Marc had been with Richard and Jack in England in the summer of 1552 when Mary took the throne from Northumberland’s hands. Richard hoped Dan had been right and that they had returned to France and to Marc’s father’s house. The house was near Château de Malbrouck, about five miles on the wrong side of the French border. Jack and Richard left the men at Eft-Hellendorf and set off together. Richard very much wanted to increase the number of men under his command again, although what his plans were he did not share with Jack.

They went at dusk. France was at war with England and it made sense not to get caught on the wrong side of the French lines. Both spoke French. Neither would pass as a native, however.

Between the border and the Château de Malbrouck was open farmland. The terrain was impossibly flat and what trees grew there were sparsely placed, offering little cover. The road was raised from the fields with a deep ditch on either side. They made their journey heavily cloaked, Jack with a hood over his blond hair.

Jack was still enjoying the freedom. The voyage from London had been a trial. Jack hated boats, and he’d spent most of the time at sea drunk, sharing Corracha’s stall. Since they had arrived in Europe though, he’d felt a freedom that had not been his for a long time. The weather was good, he was outside. Time in the saddle with his steel back in his hand, he felt his skill returning. The shakes in his hand had lessened to a point where he now thought he’d sometimes imagined them, and the soft flesh on his belly from enforced captivity in London was gone. Jack liked to feel the ache in his body when he’d used it and recognised his skills rising to their old level. Never a complacent man, he’d been taught well, and he knew his continued existence rested upon following a few simple rules strictly.

They finally arrived at their destination. A few quiet enquiries led them to Marc’s father’s house. Marc’s father’s face was grim and his mother, her apron clamped to her face, was crying silently.

“Tomorrow, they’ll hang them in the square,” Marc’s father revealed.

The man before him enquiring after his son was cloaked, but what he had been able to see told him of a wealth his son would never have. Well-stitched, soft leather boots were showing from the edge of the cloak he had wrapped around himself; there was a sword belt beneath it for sure, and his eyes were drawn to the elegant and expensive jewelled rings that crested the man’s fine hands .

His son, Marc, and his friend Pierre, had been arrested three days ago for the murder of a man in the village. He’d been found behind the church wall with his head staved in, and, seemingly, two witnesses had seen Marc and Pierre delivering the fatal blows and then fleeing the scene. It was a fabrication. Everyone knew it. But as recent newcomers to the small town, the pair had been elected as scapegoats for the crime. A crime which everyone also knew had been committed by the son of the Comte de Malbrouck, but for which someone else would have to pay.

“Could you perhaps intervene, put a good word in on their behalf?” Marc’s father pleaded.

Richard placed a hand on the man’s arm. “I wish that I could, but I am English, and France, where we stand, is at war with England. It’s unlikely a word from an enemy is going to offer your son any help. Come on Jack, let’s go into the town and see what we can do.”

They left the shack, and behind it their horses, and made their way through the dusk-darkened streets to the town square.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Jack hissed in his ear.

“Not at all,” Richard replied, and then added, “Didn’t you tell me once that you declared yourself a Scot when in France?”

“Aye, I did. The French have no idea what a bloody Scotsman sounds like, so it’s usually fairly easy to confuse them.”

“Well then, let us be two travelling Scots from Edinburgh. Have you ever been to Scotland? ”

“You damn well know I haven’t.”

“You’re lucky then; it’s a damp wet land swarming with midges and mites, and clans that have as yet to accept that there is a world beyond their border and whose principal pastime is fighting amongst themselves,” Richard replied cheerfully.

“Perfect place for you then,” Jack commented sourly.

Richard declined to reply.

In the square there was a tavern with benches outside and a good view of the open square where the empty wooden market stands stood in two long lines. By virtue of an economy of materials, they used the structure of the gallows platform to bolster the ends of the two rows of stalls. Behind the stalls was a pen, and from the noise coming from it, it was full of cattle, as the market would take place tomorrow. Entertainment would be provided early on and then the market would take over. The empty wooden boards would be filled with fabrics, pottery, hides, earthenware, ribbons, fowl and vegetables. The cattle to be sold, though, were already installed.

The brothers sat quietly outside the inn and Richard ordered ale and pies.

It was Jack who finally broke the silence. “What are you thinking?”

He’d spoken in English, quietly so as not to be overheard, but the reply from Richard came in his neutrally accented French. “Still your words. I’m trying to think. ”

“This is going to go wrong,” Jack observed morosely.

“Stop complaining, you wanted to be here,” Richard replied, stilling Jack’s words, if only for a moment.

“Wanted to be? If I remember, it was you who invited me,” Jack retorted.

“Only to save you having to beg to be asked.” Richard grinned. “I’m trying to think.”

Jack, still grumbling, took a long draught of ale and looked in the direction of Richard’s gaze. His brother’s assessing eyes were scrutinising the gallows platform.

It was not a new structure. Fresh planking showed where the platform has been repaired, especially at the end where the pillory post stood. Nagging wives, poor apprentices and lazy servants would find themselves chastened and tied to it for a day, shamed by the villagers and unable to avoid any unpleasant missiles aimed in their direction.

The gallows to hang a man were both simple and cruel. The neck nooses were currently looped away over the framework. The platform provided only two steps for the condemned to step up to receive the noose and then they would be either pushed or forced to jump from the top rung. The drop was not long. Jack doubted it would be long enough to break a man’s neck. Their feet would dangle only a short distance above the platform so there was no way helping hands could grab their legs and bring on a swifter end by breaking their necks.

A shudder ran down Jack’s spine. He’d liked Marc and Pierre, and somewhere, not far from where he now sat, he knew they would be contemplating their final moments the following day.

Jack pulled his gaze back from the gallows and attempted to gain his brother’s attention. “Come on, we can’t sit here all night.”

Richard gave him a withering glance. “There are two of us. We need to create a lot of confusion if we are to stop this tomorrow.”

“Well I’m fairly confused already as to how we, just the two of us, can take on the whole town,” Jack complained.

“We are going to recruit a dozen or so able helpers, each with the strength of ten men and all of them eager to escape themselves.” Richard laughed quietly at the expression on his brother’s face. Clapping him on the arm he added, “I’ll show you later, when it gets a little darker.”

They would need rope, Richard had said, lots of rope. Some of it they filched from the back of the blacksmiths and some they liberated by silently loosening the rope bindings holding the stalls together, rendering the rickety structures even more susceptible to collapse. More they took from the gallows platform, including a good length which had been rigged as a hand rail around the edges, to keep the prisoners from the spectators. Jack shook his head as he laid out the lengths as directed; how his brother’s mind worked was beyond him, and what he needed the rope for, he had no idea.

When Richard finally told him what they were to use the rope for, his initial reaction was to tell him he thought he was mad. But then, as Richard explained in patient detail, Jack began to see how it could work and silently, under the cover of night, he set out to lay the ropes where his brother wanted them.

The final tasks Richard needed performing found them under the gallows platform. An oil lamp stolen from a baker’s window cast lurid yellow light around the interior and upon Jack, sweat beading on his brow, muscles in his neck corded as he stood, arms above his head lending a steadying hold to his brother who stood on his shoulders.

“Will you hurry up?” Jack hissed.

As if in answer, the feet on his shoulders shifted their weight and Jack cursed as he fought to keep his balance, and that of the man above him who seemed to have total faith in Jack’s ability to keep them both upright.

“I can’t see,” Richard complained. His weight shifted again causing Jack to sway. “Pass me the lamp.”

Loosening a hand from his brother’s calf, Jack reached tentatively for the oil lamp where it sat on a planking shelf. It was just too far away from him to reach without leaning, and lean at the moment he could not. Shuffling his feet in the dirt, he closed the gap.

“Hurry up!” Richard said, using the wall for support. He leant down and an impatient hand opened and closed above Jack’s head.

“Have some bloody patience or you’ll be on the floor with your skull cracked open,” Jack growled. He had a hold on the lamp now and, keeping it carefully level to stop the flame from being drowned, he passed it up. The lamp was taken quickly and disappeared up over, taking with it the light. Jack, returning his hand to the steadying hold on Richard’s leg, could see little below him but above him, when he tilted his head back, he saw the knife in his brother’s hand and the roped joints he was methodically applying the blade to.

All of Richard’s weight shifted to his left leg as he leant to cut the next rope fixing.

“For God’s sake, tell me where you want me to move to. Don’t make me guess,” Jack complained, moving quickly to centralise the weight again.

“I would have thought it was obvious,” came the quick reply from above him.

“I’m in the damned dark, in more ways than one. I cannot read your mind.” The man above him sawing at the ropes seemed to be totally unconcerned that his footing was not on solid ground. “Will you stand still?”

“Look, if I could swap places with you, I would. But really, it’s not that practical, is it?” Richard’s knife severed the rope and his body lurched as the support it had offered gave way.

“For God’s sake!” Jack staggered two paces forward trying to regain his balance.

“Go left, not forward. Two paces, and another, stop there – I can reach now.”

“What do you mean ‘it’s not practical’?” Jack, feet slightly further apart now, had better control over his balance.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” Richard replied. “I’m far lighter. It would hardly make any kind of sense, now would it, to put the lighter, smaller man on the bottom?”

“Are you accusing me of being fat?” Jack blurted, and when his question was met with stony silence, he continued, “Well, are you?”

“Not fat exactly. More well-built, like a cart horse, whereas I’m more a hunting hound,” Richard replied.

Jack couldn’t see his face but knew his words would be accompanied by a mischievous grin.

“Come on left, left horsey, renvers three more paces. Well done.” Richard added in the dressage command and Jack cursed.

“Just remember whose shoulders you are standing on,” Jack shuffled the last step and stood still. He felt Richard’s movement above him as his knife set to work again.

“How could I forget? Right, that should do it. Let go and I’ll jump down,” Richard commanded.

Jack loosened his hold on his legs and Richard jumped down, his hand using the top of Jack’s head for support on the way. He still had the lit baker’s lamp in his other hand and greeted Jack with a raised eyebrow. “Come on, we haven’t got all night.”

Jack, lost for words, was forced to follow in his brother’s wake as Richard dropped to his knees and crawled out from under the edge of the platform.

The morning found them back in the square. A cart, high-sided and containing the miserable forms of the condemned, was already waiting at the end of the gallows platform. Through the slatted sides they were providing caged entertainment for the gathering town’s folk who hurled insults and worse at them. Watching from the back of the crowd, Jack couldn’t see the men he knew; they had their backs to the crowd to protect themselves from the hurled filth, and it was further complicated by there being four men in the cart awaiting the rope and not just the men they sought to save.

“Shall I go now?” Jack asked under his breath.

“No, wait. Let’s see who they bring out first,” Richard cautioned, and Jack waited.

Eventually, on horseback, the town officials arrived along with a priest and took up positions on the platform. It was with some satisfaction that Jack noted that none of them had seemed to notice the missing rope that had ringed the platform, separating them from the crowd.

The condemned men in the cart had their hands tied behind them, and around their necks a second rope was looped to lead them by. The cart was opened and one of the guards, who had been cheerfully encouraging the gathered crowd to assail those within with insults and worse, picked his first victim. Winding a sinewy hand around one of the trailing ropes attached to the condemned man’s neck, he pulled. A vicious tug brought the man to land cruelly on his face, much to the amusement of the spectators.

Spurred on by the popular support, as the man got back to his knees he was pulled over again. Jack didn’t know the man, but he felt his stomach twist and his face harden as he watched him being dragged as he tried to crawl up the steps to the platform. There was a vicious cut above his left eye and his mouth was split, blood running into his eyes and mixing with the tears.

The second man avoided the humiliation suffered by the first and jumped quickly from the cart, landing squarely on his feet. Jack didn’t know him either. His feet were bare and bleeding and he shuffled slowly up the steps to join his companion.

Their crimes were read out to the assembled crowd. Death for stealing a goose.

Well , thought Jack, a man is worth much less than an animal. Christ, what a crime to go to your death for, stealing a bloody goose of all things.

Observing the pair closely, it was plain to see why they had wanted the fowl. Both their faces wore the pinched appearance of hunger, hollow-cheeked and slack-skinned. Beneath their shirts, ribs pushed through sunken flesh. The crime they had committed was the simple one of wishing to survive. Survival was something a choking rope was about to deny both of them very soon.

The priest took over then. Broad chested with a barrel of a stomach protruding from his Christian robes, he stepped to the edge of the platform to address the assembled crowd. Jack wondered if he would notice the missing rope, but the cleric was too interested in delivering a diatribe to the assembled on the Ten Commandments and in particular ‘thou shalt not steal’. He finished by lecturing the convicted, delivering the solemn judgment of a vengeful God upon them for breach of his rules.

Jack’s face darkened. He had no love for this robed, judgmental breed. Suddenly he received a hard jab in his ribs from an elbow, reviving his attention. Richard did not want Jack’s disapproving stare that he laid on the priest to attract the attention of the people pressed close to him. Jack cleared his face and watched blankly, as the men were forced to take their final two steps on earth. The nooses were slipped over their waiting necks and pulled tight. The town executioner moved behind them and pushed each of them in the small of the back. Both fought to retain their balance on the narrow perch, but both lost the battle.

Jack had been right. There was hardly any drop and they swung frantically on the rope. Legs jolting, bodies convulsing, piss running down their legs, soaking their hose. You can’t scream when you are being hung, the rope chokes off the sound in your throat, but a rattling, coughing gasp reached Jack’s ears, one he recognised. Their eyes were popping from their heads, spittle running down their chins, mouths open, expressions those of panic. The man with the bleeding face swung on his rope and his eyes, for a moment, seemed to connect with Jack’s. His mouth was wide open in a silent scream, tongue protruding from his mouth a seemingly impossible distance. Jack didn’t break the stare – it was the rope, twisting, that took the man’s gaze from his.

Jack watched them dance, the Devil’s death indeed, as he’d called it when he was a child. The sinners’ torment in Hell, starting before they’d even had their souls ripped from their bodies. The kicking stopped and after a few more minutes lessened to a twitching. The shouting crowd quietened and their interest switched to the scaffold’s next two victims.

As Jack watched, there was a hurried conversation between those gathered on the platform. The officials had their heads together and, after a brief moment, an agreement seemed to reached. A liveried servant drew a knife from his belt and dropped easily down the steps from the platform to where Jack’s old companions waited. The men he had looked for, he now recognised as they stood in the cart ready to meet their end.

As Jack’s body stiffened, a restraining hand with steel fingers bit into his arm to hold him still.

“It’s good, Jack, I think they are going to get Marc and Pierre to move the bodies for them so they don’t have to,” Richard said quietly in his ear, and it was true.

The liveried servant slashed the binding ropes and both men, their arms free, walked up the platform. The hangman had unwound the securing rope for the first noose and the body dropped, to the crowd’s delight, in a crumpled heap on the planking. The noose was loosened and slipped over the purple, swollen neck and between them, Marc and Pierre hefted the body by its legs and underarms across the platform and down the steps, rolling it into the cart before returning for the corpse of the man with the blooded face .

Richard still had hold of Jack’s arm, and now pushed him. “Go, go.”

The crowd were pressing forward, eager for the next display, and Jack, unseen, skirted quickly around the back of them, making his way to the back of the market stalls and the rear of the hangman’s platform. Dropping to his knees, he ducked under the fencing and disappeared between the warm, brown flanks of the cattle.

Last night, at Richard’s direction, he had fashioned nooses of his own and they now lay amongst the bovine feet. Shoving and coaxing first one and then another to move, he retrieved each one and slipped it over a wet, black nose and past a pair of gentle eyes. The pen was crammed and there was little space for the cattle to move, that was until the entire back fence suddenly fell flat. Jack, seeing it, raced to the back to avoid being trampled and then stabbed first one and then another thick hided rear with his poniard. The cows bellowed in fury and charged towards the opened fence. Jack kept up his encouragement, unsure which of the brown rears with their thin, tufted tails, belonged to the cattle harnessed unwillingly to the platform behind him.

The animals as a mass suddenly surged forward towards the large opening and Jack immediately heard the fierce cracking of the wooden joints behind him as the staging began to give way.

Jack pressed forward so he was amongst the escaping cattle and avoided the platform as it finally tipped and then fell, propelling dignitaries, priests and the condemned into the dirt. With a nimbleness borne of desperation, Pierre jumped first; landing squarely on his feet, he began to run as the splintered wooden platform being pulled by the herd overtook him and dragged him beneath it. Marc, not so lucky, slithered over the edge of the bouncing woodwork and fell, landing awkwardly on his knees, the platform only inches behind his heels. Jack’s strong hand pulled him forwards and forced him into a stumbling run, preventing his body from being smashed beneath the wood. The joint-wrenching hold saved him. Jack grinned at him as he dragged Marc through the jostling cram of bovine bodies.

Jack shoved and pushed them, and their heavy bodies buffeted him back in return. If he tripped, he knew they would be firstly trampled by the hooves and then further flattened by the gallows that they dragged behind them. A fierce grip under Marc’s arm, he pulled him along, forcing his way through the melee and towards the edge of the running herd.

Ahead was a wide exit from the market square. On the right was a brazier, lit with orange coal where a chestnut seller had set up his stall. The coals tumbled from the iron basket onto the mud and onto something else which could be hardly be seen.

Glowing and hot, the coals lit the black powder trail laid on the ground, spitting and hissing and showering sparks on the mud. A hessian bag thrown amongst the tumble of coals quickly burnt through and the powder ignited with a dull thunder clap.

Twenty-three panicking animals dug their cloven hooves into the soft earth of the road and brought themselves to a skidding, jolting halt. Jack, pulling Marc behind him, did not stop and emerged at the front of the cattle a moment before the lead beasts changed their course. The cows stampeded left in panic and headed back towards the market place, still dragging the platform behind them.

Bellowing, the cattle ran, and, on foot, the townspeople scattered from them. Behind the cacophony, Richard, Jack and two grateful men made a neat escape through the quiet streets.

They ran from the village towards Marc’s father’s house where their horses, already saddled and ready, waited for them. In the confusion of their escape, Jack had not chanced a backward glance and had missed the liveried men who had witnessed their escape and skirted round the edge of the cattle to give chase.

Jack, leading his mare from the back of the house, was preoccupied and unaware of the pursuers and met them head on. He was alone. Marc was taking leave of his father and Richard and Pierre were with him.

There were four of them.

The two directly in front of Jack grinned maliciously and the two on either side moved round to give his attackers space, and worse still, moved to a point where they knew his vision could no longer see them. Two in front, two behind.

Jack gripped the hilt in his right hand tighter. He couldn’t win, but every move he was going to make was going to damn well count. Of the two before him, the one on the right was the natural target. But was he going to get an attack in before it was two against one? He doubted it. On his left, just on the edge of his vision was another. Jack shifted the poniard in his hand. It would be a hard throw, and if he turned to put some power behind it, the two in front of him would be on him.

Jack pulled up his left arm, readying to make the throw – and that’s when he felt it, the forceful jolt in his back as his brother’s shoulders connected with his own.

The two behind him were no longer his concern and the two before him, their confident smiles falling from their faces, knew it.

Fighting back to back was an art. You needed to communicate your position to the man behind you without wrong-footing them, or banging into them hard and affecting their swordsmanship.

Jack heard the clash of steel behind him; his brother had engaged and Jack sent his blade towards that of the more confident of his two attackers. The other, he gauged, would wait to see what the outcome was, or he might chance an attack if Jack gave him an opening, which he had no intention of offering.

Neither were skilled and in a moment the man before Jack realised that greater numbers did not mean greater skill as he found his blade deflected back at him a second time. Jack couldn’t take the two killing steps forward he needed, as he had to remain closely linked with his brother. Otherwise, both their backs would be exposed. So when his blade connected with his assailant, it was only the bare point that cut through a sleeve to carve a scarring cut across the other’s upper arm.

It drew blood, a gasp from the man and a moment’s pause. Jack reversed the poniard in his hand and sent it on a powerful flight into his opponent’s thigh. The blade buried itself in muscle and flesh down to the bone. There was a scream and his sword dropped. His partner was already backing from the fight, recognising that he was next.

Wisely, Jack didn’t turn. A boot to the injured man’s leg caught the hilt of the poniard, sending him falling to land on his back, screaming. The other ran backwards until he judged himself a safe distance and then turned and took flight.

Then Jack did turn. Richard also had one man down who was now rolling on the road, blood bubbling from his mouth, hands clasping his chest where his brother’s blade had pierced his lungs. The second had dropped his sword and was stepping slowly backwards, his hands up in a gesture of supplication.

Jack clapped his arm around Richard’s shoulders for the briefest of moments before turning to deal with his fallen foe.

He pulled the poniard from the man’s leg, and the man emitted another agonised howl as the blade was wrenched from his flesh.

The horses worked hard for them, carrying a double load and at a gallop most of the way. A coppice of trees provided some small shelter and they finally broke their flight there, resting the sweating mounts.

There were tears in Marc’s eyes. He dropped to his knees in front of the Master.

“That was a kindness I don’t deserve, Master.” His voice was the accented French Jack remembered.

Pierre joined him, kneeling, head bowed. “Neither of us can thank you enough.”

There was a silence. It was uncomfortable to Jack, but if it was to Richard, he didn’t show it.

Finally Richard spoke. “Let us hope that you are both afflicted with very long memories.”

Swallowing hard, Pierre met the Master’s eyes. “Very long, Master, you can depend upon it.”

Richard nodded. “Get up. We will give the horses a little longer, but we dare not stay longer than that. It’ll not take them long to realise they have been duped and send out men to hunt for us, and there is a chance they saw us riding this way.”

Jack, a bone scraper in his hand, was wiping the lathered sweat from his mare’s neck.

“That was a good start to a day, don’t you agree?” commented Richard, leant with his back against the mare’s saddle.

Jack was astounded. “I like women, I like ale, I love good food and the feel of a great horse. I don’t overly like being nearly trampled to death, only you could find some pleasure in that. ”

Richard, laughing, bent his head close to Jack’s. “Yes, you did. Admit it to yourself. We are not out of this yet, but I will lay a wager you’ll be telling a good story over ale to Froggy and Dan when we return.”

Jack, pulling up the girth strap he’d slackened when he’d dismounted, shook his head. “As you say, we are not out of this yet. I suggest we leave, and soon.”