by Tim Willocks
He fended a wave of despondency and drank wine.
He remembered that Carla had mentioned some fellow in the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, the department of the King’s ‘lesser pleasures’. This, surprisingly enough, did not include those specialists who attended him at stool, but it did include those responsible for his lavish entertainments. What was his name? Carla’s letter was in his saddlebags.
Tannhauser started as the two girls appeared at his table. The second was the meeker in manner, her hair summer-blonde. He clambered to his feet and bowed.
‘We accept your invitation,’ said the girl who had confronted him.
‘I am delighted,’ replied Tannhauser, while wondering why on earth he had extended it. He saw that Grégoire remained seated, wolfing food. ‘Grégoire, a gentleman stands and bows when a lady approaches.’
Grégoire leapt from his bench and bowed with such zeal that he banged his forehead on the table. The girls laughed. Grégoire directed a deformed grin at Tannhauser, as if to suggest that their mirth should not provoke him to violence. The view of his gums was as revolting as before. Tannhauser joined in the smiles.
‘This is my elder sister, Flore Malan. I’m Pascale Malan.’
‘I’m charmed. Eat and be merry.’
The girls crowded onto his bench and fell upon the food with even greater gusto than Grégoire. Tannhauser’s appetite waned. His eye fell on his heaped luggage and another problem loomed. The palace guard would hardly let him stroll into the Louvre loaded down with guns.
‘So you’re another of these Catholic fanatics,’ said Pascale.
She tossed her chin at the white eight-pointed cross blazed on his chest.
‘My days as a fanatic are long behind me.’
Pascale stared at him.
‘In any case, the Huguenots enjoy bloodshed as much as anyone else. Their atrocities may be less widespread, but that’s a problem of manpower, not morality. And both parties hate the Moslems and the Jews, so all is right with the world.’
She broke into a smile. She had a distinct gap between her front teeth. The gap gave her a certain gawkiness, which magnified her charm.
‘Martin Luther hated the Jews for all the same reasons the Catholics do,’ she said, ‘but he also invented some new reasons, which considering the centuries the Church had before Luther came along, was quite an achievement, don’t you think?’
If she was poking fun at him, Tannhauser was enjoying it.
‘Luther was so brilliant he worked out that you could hate the Jews for exactly the same reasons he hated the Catholics,’ she continued. ‘He argued, for instance, that Catholics and Jews both believe that salvation comes from obeying the laws of God, not from faith alone. So Lutherans get the best of both worlds. They can combine a hatred of Jews with a hatred of Catholics without sacrificing theological consistency.’
‘You are forcing me to a complete reassessment of the man’s genius.’
‘However, you will find that Calvin’s attitude to the Jews is very different from Luther’s. For one, he includes them among God’s Elect, and provides arguments to demonstrate that the whole offspring of Abraham, uniquely among the nations, will enjoy eternal life.’
‘Have the Jews heard these glad tidings?’
‘And unlike Luther, and Rome, Calvin doesn’t blame the Jews for the death of Christ. He blames everybody. You see, Calvin says you can’t say that the Jews are exceptionally wicked, because all men are just as wicked as each other, and not just relatively speaking, but entirely so. Though, by the same token, neither are the Jews less sinful, or depraved, than anyone else.’
She smiled as if daring him to feel mocked.
‘You’ve led me out of my depth,’ he confessed. ‘My life has seen very little theological consistency.’
‘No one is more consistent than Calvin. All you need know is that all men, without exception, are evil and corrupt to a radical, irredeemable and absolute degree – believers and non-believers, the saved and the damned, the good and the bad alike.’
‘I do indeed know that, though it’s a conclusion I’d reached by myself.’
‘Nevertheless, some will be welcomed into Heaven, even though they are every bit as wicked as those who will go to Hell.’
‘Then there’s a chance for me after all.’
‘So you’re not as holy as your shirt proclaims.’
‘My shirt fools men, not God.’
‘But you do believe in Him?’
‘I believe in a God beyond any name or doctrine we can hang around His neck.’
Pascale turned to her sister. ‘He sounds just like Father.’
Flore nodded in agreement. She gave Tannhauser a wary look. She was a year or so older than Pascale, but not nearly as saucy. Pascale turned back to Tannhauser.
‘My father’s a freethinker, too.’
‘I’d beware of painting either of us with that brush, unless you’d see us hanged.’
‘He says men in times to come will stand in wonder at the miseries we have made for ourselves.’
‘They’ll be too busy wondering at miseries of their own manufacture.’
‘He says that this royal wedding – and this peace – are a sham. He says that war only slumbers and little it will take to reawaken it.’
‘Your father should teach his daughter to be wary of strangers.’
‘So I must live in fear of speaking my mind?’
‘We all must live in fear of speaking our minds.’
‘Even you?’
‘I have nothing to say that’s worth dying for.’
She studied him, as if seeking to read some darkness in his soul.
‘That’s a pity.’
‘I would once have thought so, too.’
Tannhauser poured more wine. He drank.
‘What’s your father’s work?’
‘I’m his apprentice.’ Pascale brandished her ink-stained hands. ‘Guess.’
‘A printer,’ said Grégoire.
‘A publisher,’ corrected Flore. ‘Mainly texts for the Collège de France.’
‘A daring profession for a freethinker.’ He noted that Flore’s hands were clean. ‘And your mother?’
‘She’s dead,’ said Flore. She did not elaborate.
‘You don’t look much like a chevalier. Or a count, for that matter, but I’ll bet you’ve been for a soldier.’
‘I’m a merchant. I trade with the East, Spain, North Africa. My ventures in the English trade ended in total loss when your co-religionists started a third war, and the Sea Beggars commandeered the ship and all my goods.’
‘So that’s why you don’t like us.’
‘I like you both a great deal.’
‘What do you trade in?’
‘Saffron. Pepper. Opium. Glass. Whatever comes my way.’
‘Is that what brought you to Paris?’
‘No. I’ve come to find my wife and take her home.’
‘Does she have a lover here?’
Tannhauser had never considered the possibility, not on account of Carla’s virtue, though her loyalty was not in question, but because the thought that she might prefer some other man over himself was inconceivable. Even so, had a man suggested such a thing, Tannhauser would have struck him dead. Flore sprang to Carla’s defence.
‘Shame on you, Pascale. He loves her as a chevalier loves, it’s clear. As an eagle loves the wind. A woman so loved would never be unfaithful.’
‘Carla was invited to the royal wedding. She’s expecting our child.’
This information begged so many questions that Pascale was struck silent.
‘Tell me, how would I find the lodgings of a given student?’
‘Is he a good student?’ asked Flore.
‘He’d better be.’
‘Then you might ask his Master at the college. Your student might even be lodging with him. It’s not uncommon, if he’s keen enough.’
‘Excellent advice, thank you. And where can I rent a room, where my ge
ar would be safe from thieves for a few hours? I’ve important matters to settle at the Louvre, and as you see I’m overburdened.’
At mention of the Louvre, Pascale’s eyes widened further. Flore spoke again.
‘Every room in the city is packed with visitors here to celebrate the wedding. Thousands came, along with thousands more hoping to profit from the rest. As to an inn that’s safe from thieves, even at the best of times . . .’
Tannhauser frowned. He cursed the wedding.
‘We can keep your gear safe for you,’ said Pascale.
‘Pascale,’ said Flore.
‘Of course we can. You trust us, don’t you?’
Strangely enough, he did.
‘I hope I may insist on paying you for that good deed.’
‘You may,’ said Pascale.
‘Where would you store the gear?’
‘At our home. No one would ever find it and it’s not far.’
‘There’s nothing of great value. Except for a spare shirt. And a pound of Persian opium. And the guns. The guns are the problem.’
‘The guns?’ said Flore.
‘I doubt I can wander about the Louvre carrying a rifle and a pair of pistols. So with your father’s permission, I’d count your offer a very great boon.’
Outside the Red Ox stood four buckets of water in a row, watched over by an urchin boy. It seemed that in Paris buckets were worth stealing, too. Pascale gave him a double handful of leftovers from the chickens, which the boy thought more than fair payment. Pascale and Flore each hefted two buckets and set off.
They turned the corner and came upon a brawl in the street. Four young men were kicking and punching a fifth, who knelt clenched and bloody by a wall. A jeering crowd egged the assailants on. Tannhauser plotted a course that would take them clear of the melee. He herded the girls and their buckets across the road.
‘Please!’ The beaten youth screamed, all dignity stripped. ‘Please!’
His entreaties were only an incitement to greater violence. It was a fact strange to contemplate that a man who begged for mercy made the job of his tormentors all the easier. Tannhauser felt disgust, for the victim as well as the brutes.
‘Can’t you stop them?’ said Pascale.
The brawlers concerned him not at all. The crowd did.
‘He’s no friend of mine.’
He looked in the direction of Pascale’s backward glance. A double crack rang out as a boot smashed the victim’s head into the wall. He slithered to the cobbles where the stomping continued unabated, the aggressors grabbing one another’s arms for balance, like revellers in some monstrous dance.
Pascale shouted. ‘Leave him alone, you bastards.’
Heads turned and obscenities flew back.
Tannhauser ushered the sisters onwards, their buckets sloshing water over his feet. He sensed Grégoire at his heels. They cleared the hurly-burly and reached a cross street and turned right. He was relieved. Both sisters were white-faced, Pascale more with anger than with fright. They set down their buckets to catch their breaths.
‘Where is the Huguenot neighbourhood?’ asked Tannhauser.
‘Protestants are spread all over the city,’ said Flore, ‘but there are more here, in the sixteenth, than in most others.’
‘If they don’t keep their heads down,’ said Pascale, ‘they get them kicked in.’
He looked at her. Her opinion of him had fallen, he could see, though why this should matter to him as much as it did, he could not fathom.
‘I salute your courage,’ said Tannhauser, ‘and even your compassion, but the world is as it is, not as you might like it to be. Helping that fellow would not change the world, it wouldn’t even change the street. It would only change our own circumstance, for the worse.’
‘I will not call you a coward, for that I do not believe, but if the world can’t be changed by small acts of virtue, it can’t be changed at all.’
‘No doubt, Pascale. Again I salute your ideals. But a mob can’t be predicted. It might have shown me its throat, but, had it turned, there is no beast so fierce. And then I might have been forced to kill them all.’
Pascale stared at him. It took her a moment to realise he was serious; another to believe him capable of the deed. She blinked, unwilling to abandon her outrage.
He said, ‘From such small acts of virtue are wars born.’
‘Huguenots are killed every day in Paris. They’re beaten and robbed and insulted. No one is ever punished. No one even dares to speak out against it.’
Tannhauser’s sympathy for the Huguenots was not great. They regarded themselves as God’s chosen and wallowed in victimhood, yet their appetite for bigotry and violence was as healthy as any he had seen during a long career in such trades. They had imported whole armies of Dutch and German mercenaries, and at the war’s end had left them to ravage the countryside unpaid. Thousands were out there still, inflicting wounds that wouldn’t be healed for generations. In sanctimoniousness, a habit he despised more than malice for it brought greater evils, the Protestant leadership could not be matched. In all other forms of moral degeneracy, they were fully the equals of their Catholic foes.
‘You’re a Huguenot.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Pascale, with a stiff smile. ‘You’ll have to ask my father.’
‘I would be glad to. Where’s his house?’
Pascale pointed to a shop across the street. The building was three storeys high and no more than fifteen feet wide. Exposed timbers poked through crumbling plaster. A sign splattered with thrown filth read: Daniel Malan . . . Printer to the Excellencies of the Collège de France. The windows were shuttered from without. Beneath them he noted the remnants of broken glass.
Pascale said, ‘My father is out at one of his meetings.’
‘Are you sure my gear is welcome?’
Flore said, ‘Of course. And please forgive Pascale her sharp tongue. You were worried for our safety and you were right.’
Flore grabbed her buckets and crossed the street. She opened the front door with a key on a cord around her neck. She turned on the threshold.
‘Your belongings will be here whenever you want them.’
‘Are you sure your father is out? I’d value his blessing on this arrangement.’
‘You protected his daughters from an unpredictable mob and avoided a war,’ said Pascale. ‘Why wouldn’t he bless it?’
Tannhauser smiled. He opened the pan cover and blew out the priming. He handed the rifle to Pascale. Its weight caught her off guard. She stacked it inside the door. Grégoire gave the holstered pistols to Flore. Tannhauser rummaged in his saddle wallets and at length found Carla’s letter, wrapped in oilcloth. He pushed it into his boot top. He gave the wallets to Pascale. She stowed them inside. He glanced up and down the street.
‘Promise me you’ll lock the doors and stay inside, until either your father returns or I do. No rubbing elbows with students in taverns.’
‘They were actors,’ said Pascale. ‘On their way to an audition.’
‘Actors? I did you a better turn than I knew. Let me hear your promise.’
‘You have my word.’
‘Let me hear the lock turned and the bolts thrown.’
Tannhauser gave Pascale an écu d’or. She was astounded.
He bowed goodbye. Pascale showed him her gap-toothed smile.
‘You be careful, too,’ she said. ‘There are a lot of angry Huguenots at the Louvre. And unlike that wretched boy you left in the street, they carry swords.’
‘Why should they be any more ill-tempered than usual?’
She looked at him as if he were stupid, a diagnosis she at once confirmed.
‘Because Admiral Coligny has been shot.’
‘Shot or killed?’
‘Shot, by a Catholic marksman. But by all accounts he will survive.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Yesterday morning. The city talks of nothing else.’
‘Has the would-be as
sassin been caught?’
‘Not as far as I’ve heard.’
‘I appreciate the intelligence. Now mark your promise.’
Pascale closed the door. He listened for the scrape of key and bolt. He pulled the letter from his boot and unwrapped it. The most wondrous handwriting he’d ever seen. The sight of it made his heart clench. With each word he heard Carla’s voice and love stabbed him. With each stab, he felt afraid. He found the functionary’s name that had eluded his memory.
Christian Picart. Steward of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi.
Tannhauser folded the letter and stowed it away.
Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot demagogue, shot but not dead.
A fourth war in the offing; if not in progress.
The Louvre doubtless a swamp of frantic intrigues.
Carla was over eight months pregnant.
And he didn’t know where to find her.
‘Come, Grégoire. The day is far from done.’
CHAPTER TWO
A Very Great Philosopher Indeed
TANNHAUSER RETURNED TO the Collège d’Harcourt. It was deserted. They left and crossed the Pont Saint-Michel to the City, past shops selling gimcracks and tawdry apparel, and Tannhauser decided to buy Carla some token of affection. Carla was not an acquisitive woman; her habits and tastes were more austere than his own, yet for this very reason he was puzzled that his gifts always brought her such delight.
‘Grégoire, where would I find fashionable goods, fit for a lady?
Grégoire garbled. The boy had a tendency to speak through his nose, interspersed with the growls and grunts he seemed to require to get any words out.
‘Speak slowly so you shan’t appear an idiot. I can’t keep asking you to repeat yourself, so I shall do this –’ he wagged a hand at his ear ‘– to tell you I don’t understand.’
‘I’m sorry, master. No one listens to me except the horses.’
‘In this respect, at least, I’m a horse’s equal. What did you say?’
Grégoire pointed to the façade. ‘The Grand Hall in the Palais de Justice.’
In the Grand Hall hundreds of stalls sold velvets, silks and linens; decks of cards for playing tarot; jewellery, feathers, buttons, hats, elegant clothes. As Tannhauser wandered the market the burden of selecting a gift for Carla descended upon his spirits. The silks on display were superb. When first they’d met Carla had captured his eye, and more, by wearing Neapolitan silk. Red and diaphanous. The memory of her nipples haunted him yet. Such fabrics appealed to his own appetites but were hardly apt for a woman advanced in pregnancy. Or were they? Might the thought not flatter her? It was the sentiment that counted; but which sentiment? He caught sight of a baby’s christening robe in white silk. He scrutinised the seams and invisible threadwork. Carla would adore it.
