Captain Fantom Read online

  When I got back to the fight, it was almost finished. The musketeers weren’t coming, that was clear, and the Protestant captain had settled for a draw. Both sides had disengaged simultaneously so that neither felt disgraced and the only people still fighting were two unhorsed and disarmed soldiers who were wrestling and punching each other with a vast expense of energy for comparatively small results. Gradually they realized that everyone else was waiting for them and rather sheepishly they stood up, separated and joined their fellows. And that was that. We had seven dead, two seriously wounded and host of minor cuts and scratches. Only two of the dead were my men, which pleased me. I like to be associated with survivors, both under and over me.

  I told D’Amblève’s sergeant where to find his colonel and took my own men back to report. I made no mention of my part in saving D’Amblève’s life, of course. Such things must always come from other sources. It would not have surprised me if the beautiful boy had forgotten to tell anyone, but I did him an injustice. Chivalrous prigs are forced by their own code to acknowledge deeds of valour and debts of honour. I was summoned to the commander’s tent that night where Tilly thanked me courteously for the assistance I had given his cousin that day. I made modest noises but Tilly was a professional too, though of a different kind from myself, and he smiled thinly and cut through my play acting.

  ‘Colonel D’Amblève and I are both in your debt,’ he said. ‘Call on us when you are in most need.’

  Yes, the old boy knew that his professionals would always want paid in the end.

  1624–6

  Lower Saxony

  Soldiering under Tilly was a very different business from soldiering under Mansfeld. For a start you got your money fairly regularly. Don’t misunderstand me, there was still plenty of pillaging and all the rest going on, but that was for extras and in your own time. As a well paid and, in a strict military sense, well disciplined force, we moved where tactics demanded, whereas Mansfeld’s lot tended to sit on a patch of countryside till they’d sucked it dry then move on in search of fresh suckings.

  Mind you, I don’t think the peasants very much appreciated the differences between us. I could remember the days only a few years earlier when there was still what the politician’s call a climate of confidence. Three or four of you could ride up to some nice isolated farmhouse and get a real welcome with only the minimum of persuasion. Water for the horses, supper with the family, two or three juicy farm lasses who’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t given them a good bang on the old farmer’s bed. And when that was done, you’d help yourself to the sockful of gold he kept under it and be on your way, no one harmed. The girls were used to having their porridge stirred by everything in breeches, including their own granddads. You brought news of the great world outside, who was up, who was down. It they were Catholics I’d tell ’em the Emperor was triumphant, if Protestants I’d assure them that the Elector was on the up and up. And as for taking their money, there was sure to be another sock somewhere up the chimney or in the midden. They could keep that. I was never greedy. As long as I could live well, dress well, own good horses, I never cared for the accumulation of wealth. In my trade a private fortune is awkward to transport and difficult to protect, a constant invitation to your improvident fellows to slit your throat some misty night. Well, everyone knew I spent as quickly as I got, so if anyone wanted to catch Carlo Fantom with gold in his purse, he’d have to move like lightning!

  But those easy days were long past. Now at the first approach of the soldiery, the locals buried their wealth and headed for the hills so that very often by the time you caught up with them you were too tired to perform. In any case I suffered from a most unfortunate disability which prevented me from restricting my activities to the safety of the general sacking of a town or the remoteness of some peasant’s cottage. Most officers of my acquaintance were able to modify their approach according to their company. I have seen men whose bare buttocks I have observed bobbing with the best after a successful assault on a city only a few hours later smirking and bowing and kissing hands and going through all the other long preludes to uncertain cuckoldry which polite society requires of a gentleman. But I could never manage it. I was no pampered jade, bred for the safe carriage of ladies. No, like a well trained cavalry horse when the trumpets sounded, there was no reigning me back. I must charge!

  And therein lay my disability, for I never knew when those trumpets would sound. And this, as you may imagine, led me into grave danger. It meant that instead of ignorant peasants whom no one really cared about, I was often led on to ravish a much better class of woman, tradesmen’s wives, merchants’ daughters, gentlewomen even. Circumstance had made me a social climber and the higher you get, the harder you may fall.

  Tilly was both a comfort and a liability in these matters. I had saved the life of the beautiful boy and this counted for a great deal. But he was cursed with religious leanings – I heard that at one stage in his life he had thought of becoming a priest! – and though he had as little control over the behaviour of his men as any general who cannot keep up to date with their wages, yet where he could administer discipline, this he did with great vigour. A case once proved, Tilly was quite happy to let a couple of his men be whipped or branded or occasionally hanged. It kept relations with the civilian populace (at least, that bit of it that mattered) in some kind of balance and it provided an entertainment for bored soldiery.

  Well, for the most part I had kept my nose clean, only once or twice having to rely on my special relationship with the general to save an awkward situation. Usually I managed things by myself, either by moving with so great a speed that I escaped identification, or else making some kind of financial arrangement with the man of the house. Most husbands and fathers have their price. Oddly, the former generally come cheaper. But word does tend to get around in a small set-up like an army and I knew that my credit with Tilly was perhaps growing a little thin. But he was a fair man. He would make it quite clear to me when finally it ran out.

  That time came one smokily hot June day in a little market town called Zweikirchen in Lower Saxony. There had been a long lull in the fighting and for once we could feel able to enjoy our repose. I was strolling down a narrow street which in winter must have become a river of mud but which presently was baked hard and brown. Something whistled past my head and bounded on the hard surface. It was a ham bone picked clean. As I watched a cur ran past me, seized it in his teeth and ran off quickly, pursued by half a dozen others which seem to have sprung out of the dust. I looked up to see a young woman looking down at me from the second storey of the tall overhanging house I was passing. She had a broad grin on her round jolly face. Whether the ham bone had been aimed at me and if so, with what motive, I did not know. But suddenly the trumpet was sounding and the spurs were being dug deep. I pushed open the house door and boldly walked up the staircase I found facing me. On the second landing I turned left and a moment later was in a large well furnished room with the girl. A table was set for a meal and clearly she had been paring the last pieces of meat off the bone which she had tossed through the window. I say ‘clearly’ because in her right hand she had a large knife with which she was separating the ribs of a half side of beef. Despite the deprivations of the war, there seemed to be no shortage in this house.

  She was I guessed from her dress and demeanour a daughter of the family, not a servant, and she looked at me with lively interest as I stepped smartly towards her. I had learned from my life in Venice how courtesy disarms even those most suspicious of the assassin, and now I smiled and bowed low, unfastening my breeches as I did so. When I rose, they fell, and my naked poinard was out; but the girl did not see it, for as I rose I caught up her skirts in my arms, flung them over her head and thrust my weapon upwards.

  She shrieked beneath her petticoats and jerked violently backwards, taking us both into a large pigeon pie. The crust broke and a cloud of aromatic steam diverted my senses for a moment. But only for a moment. I t
hrust again. And behind me I heard a door open.

  What it feels like for the burgermeister and his wife of a small German town to bring their pastor into lunch and discover their daughter being ravished across the first course, I do not know. But I do know what it looks and sounds like.

  The burgermeister, a short fat man in his fifties, with a face as brown and polished as the crust of his pigeon pie, rounded every facial orifice, including his piggy nostrils, into an O of incredulity. His wife equally fat but a foot taller threw back her head and began to scream. The pastor stared at us with lively interest, and, reverting to type, began to pray in Latin.

  Reluctantly I abandoned the girl and stood upright. The sight did nothing to reassure them. The girl’s screams now mingled with her mother’s and she swung the carving knife which she still held in her hand, in an arc which nicked my left ear. I felt it was time to leave.

  Trying to draw up my breeches, I turned and made for the staircase. Behind me the girl fell into the pastor’s arms (strange choice), her father stood surveying indignantly the damage done to his dinner, and the mother seizing the knife from her daughter’s nerveless grip came in pursuit.

  My German was good enough to understand the proposals she was screaming after me and I started taking the stairs three at a time which, with my breeches still around my knees, proved too hard a task. I tripped at the first landing and crashed head over heels to the foot of the stairs.

  The good Frau was upon me in a flash. I caught her knife arm as the weapon came swinging down at my belly and used her own impetus to bring her crashing down beside me. The breath was knocked out of her and I wrestled her over on her back with the simple intention of rendering her hors de combat while I made my escape. But despite everything my weapon was still at the ready, I realized, and her skirts were round her bum. I took careful aim.

  When the burgermeister, his daughter and the pastor arrived on the first landing a minute later, I did not need to look or listen. Their disbelief was tangible.

  But at least, I thought as I stood up and adjusted my dress prior to leaving, I had probably discouraged pursuit.

  All might have been well if I had ridden straight back to my quarters and kept out of sight till the army moved on. Complaints of one kind or another poured in every day and no one bothered with identity parades. If they wanted military justice the burghers had to bring the criminal with them. But it never occurred to me to hide. By the time I’d ridden a hundred yards, the business had quite gone from my mind. It nearly always does. I enjoy the performance but I neither gloat nor agonize over the memory.

  So my indignation was not at all faked when half an hour later a gang of watch-men armed with staves burst into the Gasthof where I was drinking with Lauder and seized me before I could resist. The burgermeister was with them, more porcine that ever in his triumphant outrage. It was at this point that I realized he was the burgermeister and I felt a momentary unease.

  Lauder was too canny to offer me any assistance in the face of such odds. Indeed as my offence became clear to him, his face, wrinkled and worn like an old leather purse, assumed an expression of distaste and he said, ‘He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.’

  I knew full well from having listened to him in his cups that this deep respect for the purity of his flesh had only developed as age had rendered other attitudes academic, but his sincerity of tone impressed the Germans and they accepted his suggestion that I be brought before Tilly at once.

  I was heartily glad at this in one way. While my captors would scarcely have dared to kill an officer of the League in broad daylight, the burgermeister looked capable of putting the boot in with nasty effect if he had got me alone in the local gaol. On the other hand a couple of hours’ grace might have given me a chance to set up some kind of alibi.

  Tilly listened in grave silence to the complaint while beside him D’Amblève glared at me in pink and white disapproval. But some of the other senior officers present turned away to conceal smiles as the details of the story were revealed. The burgermeister saw this too and launched angrily into a powerful plea for justice, reminding Tilly of the agreement reached between the army and the town fathers by which the town offered provisions and shelter in return for a guarantee of good order.

  It was a valid argument and Tilly looked at me with an expression which told me the end of my credit was near.

  ‘Captain Fantom,’ he said. ‘How do you answer these grave charges?’

  ‘Charges, sir? Which charges?’ I said casually.

  ‘Do not be frivolous in this company,’ advised Tilly acidly.

  ‘I am not frivolous, sir. But do we now dignify with the title of charges what seem to me but malicious assertions? When no evidence or witnesses are produced, surely what we hear is not a charge so much as a slander.’

  ‘Would you have ladies brought before this company, sir, to confess the shame you have put upon them?’ This was the lovely lad, of course, his golden curls shaking with indignation.

  Tilly silenced him with a glance.

  ‘Burgermeister,’ he said, ‘can you support these allegations with witnesses? We are loth to bring your wife and daughter here, but justice must be served?’

  ‘No need, you eminence,’ said the burgermeister triumphantly. A few minutes later, the bible-clutching pastor was produced, ready and eager to tell all he had seen.

  ‘Hold, sir,’ I said as he began. ‘First I shall require of you to swear an oath.’

  ‘An oath!’ he echoed. ‘What form of oath?’

  ‘None that I shall not prove willing to swear myself when my time comes,’ I assured him. ‘You have your Bible there I see. Place your hand on it and take your oath like a Christian.’

  I spoke casually but I was tense inside. My guess and my hope was that this so-called pastor would prove to be one of those anabaptists who spotted Germany like the pox and who believed that the third commandment made the taking of oaths a blasphemy.

  There was a long silence then finally, ‘No!’ he said.

  I sighed with relief. When it comes down to it some of these anabaptists can be as subtle as Jesuits with their equivocations, but I’d got myself a nice simple one here. The point was that we were an army of conquest, not of conversion, and as far as Tilly was concerned, though he believed firmly in the cause he fought for, the towns he overran were judged by their degree of co-operation rather than of Catholicism. A Protestant burgermeister leading his fellows in collaboration was preferable to a Catholic figurehead placed there by the army. But tolerance can only be tolerated so far. Tilly was genuinely disgusted by this display of the Protestant ego and in addition there was enough left of my credit for him to welcome a quick way out.

  He rose. The burgermeister began to protest but the commander silenced him with a wave of his hand, saying, ‘I will not hang my officers where the evidence is not given in the name of God.’

  I smiled gratefully and perhaps rather triumphantly, for he looked coldly at me and added, ‘Though be assured that where the evidence holds, then any of my men, of no matter what elevation of rank, shall be fittingly punished.’

  I had been warned. I went away resolved to learn self-control from my near escape, and indeed for a fortnight or more I did not touch a lady of any quality, no, not even an ordinary burgher’s wife, but contented myself with females of the lower orders such as freely follow the army.

  Then we marched once more and I was kept in a state of grace by the angel of fatigue who was my constant companion. Tilly saw to this, aided by the beautiful boy. I was given command of a company of foragers and found that I was covering twice as much ground each day as the main force in its advance. Nor could I complain that this expense of energy was not necessary for Mansfeld had passed this way too recently for provender to be easily available. What little food and grain remained the peasants hid, and themselves with it. It was no life for a soldier of spirit and strong affections.

  Lauder would smile when he h
eard my complaints, the expression crossing his face like the glint of rare sunlight on one of his native black lochs.

  ‘It’s nae more than ye deserve, ye cock-worshipping Goth,’ he said. But he devoured with relish the excellent meals which were the one benefit of my enforced activity. He was an interesting old sod. He had seen everything, sampled everything. I honestly believe there was nothing in the whole gamut of human experience from holiness to depravity which he wasn’t acquainted with. Finally, assisted by age, he had settled for comfort. But it had to be comfort in the life which had been his for sixty years. No retired Praetorian’s hill farm would suit Lauder.

  ‘When do we fight, Lauder?’ I asked.

  ‘Soon,’ he said sucking at a chicken leg.

  ‘Well, let’s hope we win, but not too decisively,’ I said. ‘It’d be a shame not to spin this war out a bit.’

  He stopped sucking and looked at me in contempt.

  ‘Ye’ve a brain the size of a sow’s balls, Fantom,’ he said. ‘They’ll be fighting this war for the next five hundred years.’

  During the next few weeks we had several skirmishes with the enemy and it must be admitted we frequently came off worst. But they were clearly reluctant to meet us, strength against strength. Mansfeld would have had no qualms, but his impetuousness had brought him disaster against Wallenstein at Dessau and he was presently on his way to Hungary with the Emperor’s second army in pursuit. The enemy we faced was led by Christian of Denmark and we finally cornered him at Lutter.

  It was a close fought fight with the outcome delicately balanced till there occurred one of those amusing little surprises which you only get when you’re fighting with mercenaries. Suddenly and quite audibly to us in that part of the field, a whole company of Christian’s men announced that they were withdrawing their labour till they got paid. This had us falling about with laughter! It’s happened before, of course, for it’s a common trick of generals to postpone pay day till after the big fight, knowing full well their labour force and therefore their wage bill will have been considerably reduced. Some rapid negotiations began and we thought things would be quickly settled. But soon it became apparent all was not well. We discovered later that Christian wasn’t just holding back, he was flat broke. Charles Stuart had evidently promised him a lot of money but the English Parliament had shown more sense and kept their hands firmly in their pockets.