The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) - By Aidan Harte Page 0,139

Fabbro said disgustedly. The Morello had taught the southern towers the habit of obedience, but Bardini’s unruly spirit still possessed the north.

Whatever his misgivings, giving into the mob would be worse. Yuri ordered his condottieri to push the men back.

‘Hang the foreign dog!’ the brewer shouted.

Jacques’ head was bowed, as if he was not aware of the mania growing about him.

Fabbro looked down on the man. Jacques had betrayed him, but he took no pleasure in the thought of revenge. He was about to give the order when Geta tugged his sleeve and whispered, ‘Perhaps a degree of clemency would be wise?’

Fabbro looked at the Concordian with gratitude. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, and ignored the jeering crowd, ordering them to take the prisoner to the stables. Jacques didn’t struggle, even as the harness was fastened to his face.

The condottieri waited for Geta’s order. Geta looked to Fabbro. ‘You did the right thing, Gonfaloniere, but listen to that mob. If you spare his life, you must ensure he won’t be able to spread any more mischief.’

‘Do what you have to,’ Fabbro said in a dead voice.

Jacques’ bottom lip was clamped so that his jaw could be lowered with a screw. Now his tongue was grabbed between a pair of tongs and yanked forward. The small spiked lever turned, forcing his jaw shut again, and Jacques groaned as his tongue was pierced, thick blood spluttering from his lips.

The mess made Fabbro queasy, but the baying crowds were making it hard for him to concentrate; all he could think of was the humiliation, the ingratitude. ‘It wasn’t his tongue that destroyed the lion,’ he said at last. ‘This fellow’s no orator.’

Geta laughed. ‘That’s the idea!’

At last Jacques fought as he realised what they intended, and condottieri piled on top of him, hanging onto his limbs while others tightened the chains until he was too trussed-up to struggle.

‘Let’s do it properly,’ said Geta, and started heating a blade, ready to cauterise the wound.

Geta asked for volunteers to wield the blade, and when Becket at once backed away, muttering, ‘Not I – my life would be worthless!’ Geta realised everyone was fearful of revenge during the dark nights to come.

‘Podesta!’ he cried, ‘this is your honour.’

‘Yuri! Yuri!’ they called, in a paroxysm of relief.

Yuri took the axe in silence, as if he himself were the condemned man. Jacques started up at him, proffering his neck, his eyes eloquent: Kill me, but do not do this.

Silently pleading too, Yuri looked at Fabbro, but like the priors behind him, his jaw was set. The axe struck the ground with a ringing note and sparks flew, dying, hissing, in the heat of the blood. Before Yuri raised the axe a second time Jacques had passed out.

Geta expertly sealed and wrapped the wounds as the smell of cooking flesh filled the cell. He looked up at Yuri with a friendly wink. ‘Clean work, Podesta.’

CHAPTER 70

The Land across the Water JERUSALEM

Before the second millennium was a century old, Jerusalem was wrested from Infidel hands. Until we appreciate this achievement we cannot appreciate why the crusaders’ children consider themselves a chosen people. Consider the Radinate as a whole, enveloping the Middle Sea in a great crescent, from the harbour of Alexandria to the redoubt of Byzant.29

True, it was beset by rivalry, but what empire is not? The scepticism of cosmopolitan Ebionites can be well imagined when the strange soldiers of a strange sect came rudely claiming Jerusalem as their birthright. This amusement turned to horror when they saw the Crusaders fight. The Curia had schooled the crusaders in Water Style,30 an art the Ebionites had no means, initially, of combating.31

The Crusaders promptly founded a kingdom, stretching initially from Jaffa to Bayrut, called Oltremare.32 Its official capital was Jerusalem, but Akka, with its magnificent harbour, was its true heart. The military invasion was followed by one of civilians: Ariminumese merchants travelled from Akka33 into Ebionite territory and beyond to the bejewelled cities of Asia, trading wool and saffron34 for silks and precious stones.35 Trade and the drudge of administrating their patchwork kingdom doused Crusader fanaticism, but the sectarian spark soon found other fuel – the people they had enslaved.

CHAPTER 71

Usually Sofia rose with the sun, but it took a screeching gull at the window to wake her on this morning. She had been too exhausted last night even to look around her chamber; she did so now. The window opened onto a balcony, covered by a long lace curtain that trailed onto the