Chapter 2: Assassination Attempt

“The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot but who paid for the bullet.” – Eric Ambler

Rome, Papal States. June 1070

Pope Alexander II wasn’t as happy as in previous months. His intelligence reported that Marion and Luke were still separated, but Great Britain was still united and showing no signs of breaking up. Even the queen was still in power. Like almost every European leader, Alexander expected Luke to rise against Marion and take over as king. When he didn’t, it confused Europe’s political classes.

Still, the distraction could have been enough for Alexander to regain control of the British church if Marion hadn’t purged it of corrupt officials in previous years. The remaining British church officials figured Luke and Marion would eventually reunite and knew Luke wouldn’t rebel. If they rebelled, it would push Luke and Marion back together.

By the time Alexander knew of their split, Marion had her feet under her, and news of Luke’s refusal to rebel against the queen had spread through the army. Alexander never had a real chance to regain his lost power, but that didn’t stop him from trying. After learning of the split, Alexander sent a flurry of letters to every church official in Britain, instructing them to do everything possible to gain power for the church.

As Alexander sat on his throne in June, he thought about far more important matters than the situation in Britain. The Papal situation in Sicily was worsening, with the remaining Normans and Muslims uniting to drive Papal forces off the island. The Normans brought military training and discipline, while the Muslims brought the support of about half the Mediterranean plus deeper manpower reserves.

So, while the Papal Army was far superior, they were being worn down by the local forces. Alexander hadn’t had the time to set up a domestic gun industry, so he had to buy them on the international market. There, he got an expensive lesson in capitalism when the increased demand from the Papal States forced the price of firearms to increase. Alexander needed those guns because he was suffering heavy losses in Sicily, and usually, the weapon was lost with the soldier.

What became a bigger problem was that the local resistance was learning to use the captured firearms. The Battle for Sicily was turning into a battle of attrition that put Papal forces at a severe disadvantage. It didn’t matter when Papal troops won a battle because the resistance would melt away, only to reform somewhere else to continue the fight.

The only part of Sicily the pope had complete control over was the area from Messina southwest to the slopes of Mt. Etna. While half of the remaining island had papal troops on it, they didn’t control it; the locals did.

Back in Rome, Sextus wasn’t sure if anything he did would cheer his liege. Ever since Marion had come to power in England, the world seemed to turn against Alexander. While the Papal States controlled most of southern Italy, the northern Italian states refused to join. Sicily became a death trap, and the remaining Byzantine stronghold was regaining power.

The Normans had been conquering Byzantine Italy, but when the Papal Army destroyed the Normans south of Rome, it gave the Byzantines some breathing room. Even though the situation in Constantinople was unsettled, the local Byzantine military leaders in Bari were not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. They used the preceding 15 months to strengthen themselves and await the perfect opportunity to strike back and retake the land the Normans had captured.

Frankfort, Holy Roman Empire. June 1070

While Henry IV didn’t have the insurgency problems that Alexander did, he did have a serious problem. Word of his wife’s plot finally reached him from the most unlikely source. Henry had been sorting incoming letters in his office to avoid a late winter storm in early March when he came across a letter from Gretchen. This was the first letter she had written him since she resigned from his service.

His delight quickly turned to horror, then to an anger he had never felt before. The letter started well enough, with Gretchen updating Henry on her personal life. His son Otto was healthy and growing quickly, while Gretchen was Marion’s spy mistress. The first hit for Henry was when he learned she was seeing a young industrialist named Nicol of Falkirk. He was a young Scot who came to York and was making a fortune operating a textile factory.

The horror started when Gretchen wrote about an assassination plot she had received intelligence about. A conspiracy that involved Henry’s wife joining forces with his brother-in-law Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Duke of Swabia. Bertha was central to this plot and planned to marry Rudolf after Henry was dead and her sister was confined to a convent. To support her claims, Gretchen sent Henry copies of intelligence reports outlining the plot and who was involved. If Henry considered ignoring the evidence, Gretchen included an actual letter from Bertha to Rudolf detailing their latest plans.

As Henry read the letter from Bertha to Rudolf, he could barely hold his anger. In the letter, there were references to a dinner he was scheduled to attend that evening. The plan had been to poison Henry’s food, and if he somehow survived, Rudolf would stab him and declare himself emperor. After Rudolf’s coronation, he would condemn Adelaide to a convent and marry Bertha. To ensure Rudolf followed through with the plan, Bertha had ties to the most powerful nobles in the empire.

Once he finished reading everything Gretchen sent, Henry was tempted to head out and arrest his wife, her sister, and his brother-in-law. Then he had second thoughts; if Henry could catch them in the act, he would have support to punish the plotters without revealing Gretchen’s letter.

Not knowing who to trust, Henry kept everything he read a secret and locked the letter in a lock box behind his father’s painting. At the dinner, Henry’s eyes continuously scanned the people attending, and what he saw frightened him. From several of his most powerful nobles, there were almost imperceptible nods when Rudolf came into the room. This plot was far more extensive than Gretchen had known, and it was up to Henry to stop. To keep from eating, Henry ate cold cuts and bread before dinner and skipped the alcohol to keep his reflexes sharp.

When the second course was brought out, Henry noticed Rudolf seemed edgy and strongly suspected which plate had been poisoned. Suspecting which dish was poisoned, Henry noticed the man delivering it wasn’t one of the usual servers but one of Rudolf’s men. That confirmed for Henry which dish to avoid. He wouldn’t have noticed the change if he hadn’t been forewarned.

“Rudolf of Rheinfelden, my dear brother-in-law, tell me; what do you think of the food this evening?”

“Ah ... it is excellent as always, Your Majesty.”

Rudolf was nervous. He knew what dish was poisoned, but Henry had chosen the very moment it was to be delivered to make conversation about the food. Then Henry took a bite and grinned.

“My dear Rudolf, you must try my plate! It is the best I have ever tasted!”

Seeing Henry not react, Rudolf thought maybe his man didn’t get the chance to poison the food. Tasting the emperor’s dish would require him to lean in the wrong direction to stab him, but he couldn’t just disobey the emperor. Since at least four more courses were planned, Rudolf figured his man would have other opportunities to poison Henry’s food, and if Henry were alive by the end of the meal, he would stab him.

Rudolf took a spoonful of the soup before Henry and tasted it. It was good but no better than his soup. Then Rudolf began to feel strange as his stomach tried to reject the toxins. Henry calmly watched as Rudolf started to vomit and foam at the mouth; he didn’t even move until Rudolf was on his back with his feet strumming the floor and hands holding his throat. With Rudolf out of the way, Henry demanded Bertha eat the remaining soup in his bowl. She refused.

“Why are you refusing to eat?”

“I am not going to eat something Satan has contacted! How else could one explain your brother-in-law’s reaction to it?”

“Satan, maybe, but in this case, the devil is mortal.” Henry stood up, and the hall went silent. “My lords and ladies, as you all can see, Satan has touched my brother-in-law, who was not strong enough to fight back! Now, how did Satan get in? This room and everything in it was blessed before we entered and again before we ate. Lords and ladies, Rudolf of Rheinfelden, Duke of Swabia, wasn’t touched by Satan but consumed the poison meant for me!” The other people in the hall stood and began screaming. Henry let it go on for a minute before he pulled one of his handguns and shot into the air. No damage was done because this gun was loaded with a blank round, but it got everyone’s attention. “How else can you honestly explain his reaction to eating the soup from my bowl?”

The noble sitting directly across from Henry spoke up. He was the Duke of Bavaria and a supporter of the plot.

“You ate the soup before Rudolf did, so you must be SATAN!”

“Did I eat the soup, or did it look like I ate the soup?” Henry turned, and everyone saw a spoonful of soup on his shirt. What nobody in the hall knew was when Henry was little, he spent the day with a magician who revealed some of the tricks of the trade, such as sleight of hand and deception. Those tricks had saved his life. Now it was time to clean house, “Empress Bertha of Savoy, you are under arrest for attempted murder and treason. GUARDS! Seize her!”

Henry’s loyal guards rushed in and apprehended his wife before her loyal noble friends could get her out. Several of those nobles were arrested as well. The Duke of Bavaria shouted across the noise.

“Emperor Henry! How dare you arrest the empress with no evidence!”

“I have all the evidence I need since Bertha of Savoy was a lover of Rudolf of Rheinfelden. One of his guards was the man who served me the poisoned soup, and I have a letter from Bertha to Rudolf planning this plot. GUARDS!” Henry shouted. “Nobody is allowed to leave the palace until further notice, and ANYONE who attempts to leave without my express permission is to be arrested. If they resist, kill them, no questions asked.”

Henry walked out of the room with his wife being dragged behind him. He led the group to a chamber deep inside the palace and had his wife tied to a table in the middle of the room. With her tied down, the rest of the torches in the room were lit, and Bertha looked around to see she was in a torture chamber. When she pulled against the ropes, there was no give, and Henry ordered everyone else but a loyal scribe to leave the room.

“Bertha, I do not wish to torture you, but I will unless you give me the names of the rest of your conspirators and tell me where the evidence is hidden that condemns them.”

Henry sighed when she didn’t answer and put several iron tools in the fire. While waiting for them to heat up, Henry lined up the necessary tools, ensuring Bertha could watch. He wanted her to start talking before the torture began. The tools in the fire were red hot, and Bertha still hadn’t said anything, so Henry took a knife and, cutting her clothing off, threw them in the fire. Using a thin, red-hot rod, Henry touched Bertha’s nipples and heard a sizzle as the flesh burned, but Bertha refused to make any sound louder than a whimper. Seeing Bertha trying to hold up, Henry used her bindings to spread her legs, then used the rod to touch her clitoris, making her scream at the top of her lungs.

“Tell me what I need to know, and this will stop. You will be given medical treatment and a private room. Also, if you provide me with everything I need, instead of executing you, you will be sent to a convent for the rest of your life. This offer is only good for a limited time, and if I have to touch you again, not being executed is off the table. The longer you make your torture last, the less you will receive when you break.”

Henry sighed when Bertha didn’t speak and moved to push another red-hot rod into her vagina.

“STOP! STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP!! Please, I’ll tell you everything you need to know,” she sobbed.

Henry motioned for the scribe to step up and begin taking notes. Bertha named every noble Henry had witnessed taking secretive glances at the dinner, plus several who were not in attendance. When she stopped, Henry put his face right up against hers.

“If any of this information turns out to be false, you will face immediate execution by impalement. Is there anything you gave you wish to change because if the scribe leaves, you will not be able to change your testimony later.” Bertha shook her head, and the scribe left. “I wish this had never happened, Bertha. But you forced my hand, and everything that happens to you from now on is because of your betrayal.”

Henry left the room, and guards came in to release Bertha, clothe her in cheap clothes, and take her to a private room. Once in her new room, a servant entered to care for Bertha’s burns. While Bertha was being cared for, Henry was rounding up nobles named by Bertha and quickly found all the evidence he needed once he searched Bertha’s chambers.

While the rounding up of conspirators only took a few days, the trials lasted months. Once a noble was found guilty, they were hanged, and their lands were seized by Henry. He did allow the family to keep a small home and some land to sustain them. Once Henry had the land, the serfs were informed of all the changes coming. They were no longer serfs but were free to leave. They had some options if they wished to stay and work the land; they could rent the land for a percentage of the harvest or pay Henry a flat rate and keep the rest. The last option was the most expensive but could lead to the highest returns; the former serfs could buy a parcel of land and own the land they farmed.

Many of the villages pooled their resources and bought the land they farmed. The people could then work the land collectively, and everyone would profit. As long as they paid their taxes and were loyal to him, Henry didn’t care.

The money from selling the former noble’s possessions and lands was used to improve infrastructure by improving roads and building the first continental-based railroads. However, every piece of steel used in the railroad’s construction had to be imported from Britain, since nobody other than the British had figured out how to make large quantities of steel.

By June, Henry had realized to further economic growth, vast sums of money would need to be invested in North Sea ports to facilitate trade with Britain. Importing the necessary rails and engines was difficult because the existing ports were not up to offloading the ships carrying them. British ships were rapidly growing larger with more powerful steam engines. The larger vessels took longer to unload and drew a deeper draft, limiting the ports they could use.

Paris, France. June 1070

While Henry was purging his nobles and building infrastructure, King Philip was trying to rebuild his kingdom after the twin disasters of King Guiscard and the British invasion. King Guiscard had stripped much of the manpower from the countryside to wage his war on Britain. When the British invaded, they stripped almost everything of monetary value, including the treasury. The only areas of France that remained untouched were in the south, where the nobility hadn’t been shaken to their core. Nobility in central and northern France had much of their wealth confiscated from them by the British. Much of that wealth was now in Britain or the hands of the peasants from whom the British had bought supplies.