About the Book
In The French Executioner, C.C. Humphreys once again brings the past to life in all its glory and peril. This thrilling novel captures the breathtaking story of how courage, love, and loyalty bound Anne Boleyn to the man who ended her life—and saved her legacy.
"Humphreys has fashioned a rollicking good yarn that keeps the pages turning from start to finish."—Irish Examiner
"A wonderful saga of magic and heroism. If you can find a first impression, hoard it and wait till it rises in value like a first edition of Lord of the Rings. This is as good."—Crime Time, UK
"A brilliant, brutal, and absorbing historical thriller on the real-life figure of Jean Rombaud, the man who beheaded Anne Boleyn."—Northern Echo
"An entertaining read—a charming page turner."—Edmonton Journal
"Lightning paced."—Publishing News
About the Author
C.C. Humphreys was born in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in Los Angeles and London. A third generation actor and writer on both sides of his family, he returned to Canada in the nineties and there his writing career began. He won the inaugural playwriting competition of the New Play Centre, Vancouver with his first play, 'A Cage Without Bars' which was produced in Vancouver and London. He was a schoolboy fencing champion, became a fight choreographer and thus turned his love of swashbuckling towards historical fiction. He is married and lives in Finchley, North London.
C.C. Humphreys was born in Toronto, Canada, and grew up in Los Angeles and London. A third generation actor and writer on both sides of his family, he returned to Canada in the nineties and there his writing career began. He won the inaugural playwriting competition of the New Play Centre, Vancouver with his first play, 'A Cage Without Bars' which was produced in Vancouver and London. He was a schoolboy fencing champion, became a fight choreographer and thus turned his love of swashbuckling towards historical fiction. He is married and lives in Finchley, North London.
Excerpt
The Gibbet
It was unseasonably cold for a late May night, but the gibbet’s
former occupant was too dead to care and his replacement too unconscious. It
was the three men-at-arms who grumbled about it, and though the removal of
the skeleton from the torso-shaped cage required some strenuous snapping and
pulling, they were not grateful for the warmth of the exercise. With their
prisoner finally wedged in and the cage’s key replaced on its hook, they
returned to their horses. Pressing themselves against the warm flanks, the
soldiers brushed the gibbet’s leavings from their cloaks, and grumbled still.
“Such a beautiful night.” The
voice came silky and warm from beneath folds of cloak and fur, the breath a
steady stream into the frosty air. “Look, a comet! In Siena we’d say: there’s
another virginity gone.”
There was a laugh, as silken as the voice, followed by a cough. A
piece of red cloth dabbed at the lips.
Heinrich von Solingen turned
toward the man who had just spoken, the man whose every command he obeyed.
Heinrich was confused. He liked things ordered and simple. They had gotten what
His Holiness wanted. Wrapped in velvet, it rested now in His Holiness’s
saddlebags. Confusion made him angry and bold enough to question.
“I don’t see why we are here, my lord. Why didn’t we just kill the
Frenchman back at the inn?”
“I think you tried, didn’t you?”
“I mean after, when he was unconscious.”
The smaller figure shifted in his saddle. Moonlight fell on a sharp
forehead, a long straight nose, fleshy lips. There was a touch of something sad
in the silkiness now.
“Really, after what he did, we should have tried him as a heretic
then given him to God’s redeeming fire. Alas, the time is not right for his
story to be told abroad. So we give him here, into God’s hands.”
“But my lord archbishop—”
The blow surprised Heinrich because the Italian was neither young
nor, he thought, especially strong. Pain contradicted that impression.
“I’ve warned you about using my title in a public place.”
“I am sorry, my lord, but there is only the prisoner and my men—”
The hand emerged again from within the cloak and moonlight glinted
on heavy rings, which explained the blood now running down Heinrich’s chin.
“Enough! You are a fool and I another to let you question me. There
may be a gibbet keeper nearby who would recognize the rank. And your men did
not know it till now. I must think. Get them to find the keeper.”
A curt command and the three soldiers
began to search where they could, yet there was little there: a bare crossroads
a league beyond a village with neither tree nor bush nearby. Little for the
full moon to shine upon but the dangling, vaguely human iron form, the
crossbeamed support and the midden of gibbet filth on which, in six parts now,
sprawled the cage’s last tenant.
The men reported their failure.
“Very well.” The Italian coughed, a gout of blood caught in the
swiftly raised cloth. There was little he could do now; and even if the keeper
did lurk and had somehow heard Heinrich’s indiscretion…Well, how could a creature
of such an occupation threaten a prince of the Holy Church?
Giancarlo Cibo, Archbishop of Siena, decided he could take the risk.
He didn’t take many—it was how he survived the hurly-burly of life back in
Italy after all. He wouldn’t take another with Heinrich’s men. Heinrich would
have to deal with them himself, later, a fitting punishment for his
indiscretion. Perhaps incorporating some unusual methods. The archbishop would
like to see that. It would truly upset the surly German. The archbishop would
like to see that too.
“Put double the usual coins in the offertory. Let’s pay the keeper
well,” he said, all silk and smoothness again.
Ducats were dropped into a small
box at the base of the gibbet, and Heinrich went back to join his men. There he
listened to his blood drip onto the pommel of his saddle, kept his silence, and
watched from a distance as the archbishop pushed his horse right up to the
gibbet.
The Italian leaned forward until it looked as if he was almost
kissing the cage’s iron-slatted face. Until he could feel the breath of the
man inside on his own lips. The man’s breathing was erratic; Heinrich’s men had
beaten him badly when they finally felled him. Not surprising, as the Frenchman
had killed two of their number and incapacitated two more, his strange,
square-headed sword dancing graceful and deadly among the suddenly
leaden-footed Germans. Heinrich had said it was an executioner’s sword, much
favored in France as a more humane way of dispatching traitors, if their rank
and purses deserved it. The sword would make a fine trophy on his palace wall,
for he knew just whose neck had last been severed with it. A neck and something
far more unusual—a six-fingered hand.
“Why did you do it, Jean?” Cibo whispered into the cage. “A belief
that it could heal, like the bones of St. Agnes? Is that what you thought she
was, Jean, a saint and martyr for the new religion? Or was it gold? The most
powerful relic in the world would have fetched more than you could have earned
in a lifetime of head taking.”
The unconscious man had no answer
for him, beyond his shallow breaths. The archbishop studied the face before
him. Features somewhat finer than was common among the French, a smaller nose,
thick black hair now slick with the blood and sweat of the fight. It was
ordinary. He was always surprised when ordinary men did extraordinary things.
“I do wonder about you, Jean. Sadly, I will never know. But it’s
mine now, a greater weapon than any executioner’s sword for myself and for
Mother Church. We’ll have to see how best we two can use it.”
And with that, Cibo turned his horse and broke straight into a
gallop. He was proud of his horsemanship and his steeds were trained to respond
to his instant whim. The Germans were surprised and, with Heinrich bellowing orders,
followed as swiftly as they were able.
Such was the speed of their departure, such their pleasure in
forsaking that dismal place, that no one even glanced back at the gibbet cage
and its new occupant. If they had, they would have seen that the first effects
of their beating had worn off.
Jean Rombaud, master executioner and recent slayer of Anne Boleyn,
had woken up.
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