The Tyrant and the Squire Read online

  Terry Jones is a writer, actor, comedian, screenwriter, film director, presenter, poet, historian and author. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

  For everyone who has enjoyed my books

  Dear Reader,

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  Contents

  Chapter 1 Milan 1385

  Chapter 2 Milan 1385

  Chapter 3 Milan 1385

  Chapter 4 Milan 1385

  Chapter 5 The Road to Pavia 1385

  Chapter 6 Mende 1361

  Chapter 7 The Road to Pavia 1385

  Chapter 8 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 9 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 10 Marvejols 1361

  Chapter 11 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 12 Marvejols 1361

  Chapter 13 Marvejols 1361

  Chapter 14 Le Truc du Midi 1361

  Chapter 15 Le Truc du Midi 1361

  Chapter 16 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 17 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 18 Pavia 1385

  Chapter 19 Le Truc du Midi 1361

  Chapter 20 Pavia 1385 / Marvejols 1361

  Chapter 21 Milan 1385

  Chapter 22 Saint-Flour 1361

  Chapter 23 Saint-Flour 1361

  Chapter 24 Milan 1385

  Chapter 25 Saint-Flour 1361

  Chapter 26 Les Gorges de l’Alagnon 1361

  Chapter 27 Milan 1385

  Chapter 28 Les Gorges de l’Alagnon 1361

  Chapter 29 Milan 1385

  Chapter 30 Les Gorges de l’Alagnon 1361

  Chapter 31 The Wolf’s Leap 1361

  Chapter 32 Milan 1385

  Chapter 33 Milan 1385

  Chapter 34 The Wolf’s Leap 1361

  Chapter 35 Lombardy 1385

  Chapter 36 Milan 1385

  Supporters

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Milan 1385

  ‘If only life were as simple as you think it’s going to be,’ thought Tom, ‘it wouldn’t be nearly such fun. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous either.’

  And at that precise moment it was the dangerous aspect of life rather than the fun aspect that Tom was experiencing – although he wasn’t quite sure which bit of it was more dangerous: the drop that had suddenly opened up beneath him or the animal that was at that moment banging its tusks a few feet above his head.

  Goodness knows why the boar was banging its tusks against the trunk of a tree, but there it was – doing it. Maybe it was a case of sheer bad temper – after all, the creature had just been cheated of its quarry, which happened to be Tom. It was one of those curious reversals of roles of which life is full. In one moment, Tom had been the pursuer, hunting the wild boar, and yet the next moment one of his co-hunters had given a piercing whistle, Tom’s horse had reared, Tom had fallen off, and the wild boar had started chasing him.

  It was just possible that the wild boar simply had poor eyesight and had mistaken the tree for Tom. In which case, thought Tom, as he watched large gobbets of bark flying off the tree in all directions, poor eyesight in wild boars was definitely something to be encouraged.

  The more he thought about it, however, the more it seemed to Tom that the drop below him represented the most immediate danger. The small branch onto which Tom was pinning all his hopes of a future existence in this world was really more of a twig than a branch, and even that seemed to be in the process of coming loose from the ground out of which it was growing.

  As for the ledge, onto which Tom had leapt, as he escaped the wild boar’s leading tusk, that was even now tumbling down the cliff face as a shower of earth and stones. It had not, it appeared, been the right thing to leap onto . . . but then he hadn’t had much choice – or much time to choose.

  Tom was, in every sense of the word, in the middle of a cliffhanger.

  At that moment, however, the danger diminished by 50 per cent. A voice rang out:

  ‘Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas!’

  And the wild boar turned, without even saying ‘excuse me!’ to the tree, and charged off into the wood.

  Tom tried to yell back but simply couldn’t find his vocal chords . . . his mind was too preoccupied with considering whether or not the danger had really been reduced by 50 per cent. True, the wild boar had run off, but the danger from the drop below him was still 100 per cent, since the twig onto which he was holding was now definitely severing forever its connection with Mother Earth.

  ‘Sir Thomas!’ It was the voice of his squire, John. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here!’ Tom almost yelled, but the awful fascination of watching the last root of the twig pulling itself free of earthly ties stopped the words in his throat. Or was it the loose earth falling from the root and filling his mouth that stopped the words? At all events the only thing he could say was:

  ‘Mgmeurgh!’

  ‘Sir Thomas!’

  ‘Here it goes . . .’ thought Tom, watching the root. ‘Going . . . going . . .’

  ‘Got you!’ Squire John’s face had appeared over the cliff edge and his hand had grabbed Tom’s jerkin just as the last root came free, and Tom hung dangling from his squire’s fingers for what seemed like half an hour but was, in fact, half a second.

  John’s other hand grabbed his wrist and Tom rammed his feet and hands against the cliff edge as the loose earth tumbled slowly down . . . down into the ravine.

  In another thirty seconds, which felt like three hours, Tom had been hauled up to the comparative safety of the cliff edge, and Squire John was dusting him down, as a good squire should.

  ‘The pleasures of boar hunting are rather overrated if you ask me, John,’ Tom said. His squire grunted, and went off to find the horse.

  It’s curious, thought Tom, as they rode back to the great castle of Bernabò Visconti, how you can get something you’ve always wanted, only to find out that maybe it wasn’t really what you wanted at all. Here he was, Sir Thomas English, a knight in the service of a great lord, riding with his squire, and yet nothing about being a knight was quite what he thought it was going to be . . . and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether what he used to think was what he now wanted anyway.

  *

  The Visconti fortress loomed ahead of them, and he turned to his s
quire and said: ‘Do you really like boar hunting, John?’

  John shrugged. ‘Not that much,’ he replied. ‘It has its moments.’

  ‘But . . .’ said Tom.

  ‘Where does it get us?’ asked John, who was a bright lad.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘Halfway down a cliff face?’ suggested John.

  Tom leaned across and cuffed him across the ears. John choked on a laugh. That was another thing Tom liked about his squire – his sense of humour.

  They were now within sight of the guards, stationed outside the main gates of the Visconti stronghold. In a few minutes they would have to plunge into the gloomy depths of the palace of the great warlord of Milan. They would make their way to the great hall and then, doubtless, they would have to hang around for an hour or two until the great lord himself deigned to appear, and the dinner could commence.

  ‘The food isn’t bad,’ said Squire John, as if he were following Tom’s chain of thoughts.

  ‘Yes, but the place is so stuffy,’ replied Tom.

  ‘Well, nobody dares say anything,’ said John. He had a way of serving up the truth without any of the usual trimmings – no garnish, no stuffing, not even any gravy. Just plonked on your plate like a slab of raw meat.

  ‘Well, would you?’ asked Tom. ‘You never know what sort of a mood my Lord Bernabò is going to be in.’

  ‘Did you hear what he did to that funny-looking chap with the long ears?’ asked Squire John.

  ‘The ambassador from my lord the Conte Verde? Yes, I know,’ said Tom, ‘he said he was as ugly as a bloodhound, and he had him shut up overnight in the kennel with the other dogs. I believe it was a joke.’

  ‘But they were my Lord Bernabò’s Great Danes,’ gasped Squire John. ‘And by the morning all that was left of him was his earring.’

  ‘Some sense of humour, eh?’ said Tom.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Squire John, lowering his voice even more, so that the guards couldn’t overhear, ‘my Lord Bernabò may have a sense of humour, but I don’t think I’ve laughed once since we’ve been here.’

  ‘Exactly my point!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘That’s why we’ve got to escape!’

  Squire John looked a bit nonplussed. ‘Escape? I didn’t know we were prisoners, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘We’re not,’ agreed Tom. ‘But my Lord Bernabò won’t take kindly to people spurning his hospitality. If he gets wind that we’re thinking of bunking off, he might turn ugly.’

  ‘That won’t be hard,’ said Squire John, although in fact the Lord Bernabò was proud of his good looks.

  ‘In fact it’s ten to one he’d try and stop us,’ said Tom.

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Like . . . er . . . cutting off our legs?’

  ‘That would slow us down,’ agreed Squire John.

  ‘And the great plus is: we wouldn’t have to go boar hunting ever again,’ added Tom.

  ‘It’s overrated anyway,’ said his young companion, but he wasn’t laughing. In fact, as Tom looked across at him, he looked downright gloomy.

  ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to get away?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Yes, yes . . . of course . . . everything you say is true about this place . . .’

  ‘Ah! Don’t tell me! The lovely Jenny has her apron strings tied around your heart and you just don’t want to cut free?’ said Tom.

  Squire John went bright red. ‘No . . . not Jenny . . . though indeed she is truly lovely of course . . .’

  ‘But only last Sunday you were ready to die for her!’ exclaimed Tom.

  ‘Indeed . . . I . . . er . . .’ If Squire John could have turned an even brighter red, then he would have done. ‘But . . . I met someone . . . someone so beautiful . . . so charming . . . and . . . well . . . there it is . . .’

  ‘And what is your new mistress’s name?’ asked Tom.

  Squire John looked round as if he were searching out a hiding-hole from which to escape his master’s queries. But he was duty-bound to reply.

  ‘My lord . . .’ he stumbled, ‘. . . her name is Beatrice.’

  Suddenly all Tom’s cheery banter dried in his throat. As if to mark the moment, a cloud passed over the sun as Tom let out a low whistle.

  ‘The young Lady Beatrice?’ he asked.

  Squire John bit his lip and nodded.

  ‘John . . .’ Tom sighed. ‘It’s one thing to make eyes at a serving girl, but to make love to one of my Lord Bernabò’s own daughters . . .’

  ‘She is only his natural daughter,’ said John.

  ‘Legitimate or illegitimate – you’re playing with fire.’

  ‘But what can I do?’ asked John. ‘She’s told me she loves me . . . and . . .’

  ‘That settles it,’ said Tom, ‘the sooner we get out of here the . . .’

  But at that moment they came to the city gate, which also formed the outer entrance to the Visconti palace. Two guards grabbed their horses’ bridles and the chief held out his hand for their documents.

  Everywhere you went in the domain of the Visconti, you had to have passports and paperwork ever at the ready. Innkeepers had to report each and every person who stayed in their inn. Bridgekeepers kept a record of whoever crossed the rivers. Gatekeepers noted the names of those that entered and left their town. The Lords of Milan knew who was where and when almost every hour of the day. Those whose whereabouts they didn’t know were soon sniffed out by the Visconti spies. – and there were a lot of those.

  ‘Every time I come into this place,’ whispered Tom in English, so that the guards wouldn’t understand, ‘I feel like that poor fellow up there.’ And he nodded up towards the top of the gatehouse, where a man with his arms held up in horror was being swallowed by a serpent with a wolf’s head. The image was scored into the brickwork, and the man was painted blood red against a blue background. It was the emblem of the Visconti lords.

  Squire John shuddered, as the guard returned their papers and nodded them in. Tom and his squire kicked their horses forward, and they were quickly swallowed up by the grim fortress.

  They were honoured guests of the Lord of Milan. And they were trapped in his world like two flies in the jam.

  Chapter 2

  Milan 1385

  No one could say that Bernabò Visconti, Lord of Milan, did not have a sense of humour. He also had a sense of what was just – so everyone said. But when you mixed these two things together the results were often unpredictable.

  For example, when a priest refused to bury some poor man until he’d been paid the correct funeral dues, Bernabò told the priest he’d get his due all right, and promptly had him buried alongside the pauper – alive and upside down.

  Another time, when the Pope had sent two Benedictine abbots to pronounce a sentence of excommunication on Bernabò, the Lord of Milan had thoughtfully met them on a bridge over the river Lambro, which in those days raced through the city open to the skies. There he cordially inquired whether the Pope’s representatives would prefer to eat or drink. It was made clear that ‘drinking’ involved being thrown off the bridge into the waters of the river, so the two abbots chose to eat. Their meal consisted of the entire parchment upon which the sentence of excommunication was written – along with its silk cord and seal.

  The story had kept Bernabò’s court in stitches for days. You see, nobody in that court was particularly worried about divine retribution – although I suppose they should have been . . . particularly Bernabò himself, as he was eventually to discover.

  This evening Bernabò appeared to be in a particularly benign mood, which – as far as Tom was concerned – made it all the worse, for as dangerous as Bernabò was when he was in a bad mood, it was his good moods that Tom found more unnerving.

  And tonight Tom had an extra cause for worry. Normally Squire John would have been at his side the moment Tom stepped into the court, but tonight he was not there. Tom had been looking round the court for some time, but the young man had totally vanished. It was most unlike him.r />
  What if John had gone to take his leave of his new paramour, Bernabò’s daughter Beatrice? What if he’d been discovered? His life would not be worth a fly’s. What if he’d told her they were planning to escape? What if she’d persuaded the young man to stay? What if she’d given their plans away?

  In the court of a tyrant you were always treading on eggshells. Now Tom felt as if he were under siege with miners digging away beneath his feet. The whole edifice of his life was – for the moment – propped up by wooden struts in the mines below. Soon they would be fired, whereupon they would collapse and the whole castle would come crashing down about his ears. It was imperative that he find Squire John before anything else could . . .

  ‘Sir Thomas Englishman!’ a voice rang out across the great hall. Tom’s blood ran cold. It was the voice of Bernabò Visconti, the Lord of Milan. The ‘anything’ that could happen just had!

  ‘My lord!’ said Tom. As he stepped forward he took a quick look at the great man. It never did to stare at him, and eyes were usually averted for most of the conversation. But in that quick glance, Tom could see that Bernabò was in one of his best moods. Goodness knows what that meant.

  ‘Come forward!’ commanded the Lord of Milan.

  Tom stepped before the great man, and the eyes of the court turned to him.

  ‘Tomorrow you join me on the boar hunt?’ said Bernabò.

  ‘Er . . . I joined you today on the boar hunt,’ replied Tom in the Lombard dialect. ‘I nearly got killed.’

  This was, apparently, the funniest thing the Lord of Milan had heard all day. He laughed and laughed and looked round his court so that others started to laugh as well. It was always wise to laugh along with the most ruthless ruler in Lombardy. Bernabò laughed until tears came to his eyes.

  ‘I . . . er . . . fell off a cliff,’ explained Tom. Well, if the information that he’d nearly been killed had been funny, this new detail was apparently so hilarious Bernabò practically fell off his seat.

  Tom sighed. He would never understand Bernabò’s sense of humour.