by Tim Willocks
Tannhauser gave him time to look into his eyes and appraise his new commander.
Stefano clicked his heels and bowed his head.
‘Yes, my lord.’
Tannhauser shook excess oil from the torch. Flames billowed up and a shower of drops flared and died as they tumbled at his feet. He handed the torch to Juste.
‘Juste, you will go with Stefano and light his way.’
Juste cringed from the torch. His head sank between hunched shoulders. Grégoire reached for the torch but Tannhauser motioned him back. He offered it again to Juste.
‘Tilt the flame away and you won’t get burned.’
Juste shook his head. Panic had him. He clasped his hands to his face.
‘No. I don’t want to go. I won’t. I can’t.’
Tannhauser slapped him across the head. The blow was mild enough but Juste staggered sideways and Grégoire sprang to hold him upright. Juste’s lip trembled. His eyes swam. He covered his face with an arm and tried to stifle his sobs. Tannhauser remembered those feelings. Terror, confusion, humiliation. He took Juste’s wrist and pulled the arm away. Juste kept his eyes cast down, the lashes beaded with tears. Lit by the torch he could have stood for a painting on the ceiling of a basilica, but here beauty begged to be defaced. Tannhauser lifted Juste’s chin so that the boy was forced to look at him.
‘Your comrades are betrayed and butchered. The King is a fiend. You are lost in a universe of lies. And no god will help you, neither yours nor any other.’
Juste stared at him, his eyes swimming as they darted back and forth.
‘Are you listening, Juste? Answer me. Say yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Listen more. Your nostrils are choked with blood and shit, your bowels are churning, your brain feels as if it boils inside your skull.’
‘Yes.’
‘You are alone.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘Your brothers are dead and gone to the dogs.’
Juste let go a sob. Tannhauser swallowed and pressed on.
‘I killed them. I killed your mother’s sons. And in my power you stand.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is night and the night has no end.’
‘Yes.’
‘And in all this dark and bloody world you have no friend.’
‘Yes.’
‘Or so you believe.’
Juste’s yearning was painful to behold. Tannhauser remembered that, too.
‘Yet in that particular at least, you are wrong. Because I am your friend.’
Juste’s tears ran down his face. His breath shuddered in his chest. Grégoire, who still had hold of him, patted him between the shoulders as if comforting a poorly horse.
‘I am your friend,’ repeated Tannhauser. ‘And you could do worse. Furthermore, since Stefano is my friend, as is, also, brave Grégoire, they are your friends, too. And so, far from being without a friend you are surrounded by them. Do you agree?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you light the way, through this black night, for your friends?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good lad. Wipe your face.’
He pushed the stave of the torch into his hand. Juste closed his fingers around it and held on. Tannhauser took Juste’s other hand and anchored that around the stave, too.
‘The torch will blind me to the dark, and the dark is where I must be master, so I will go on ahead. You won’t see me but I will be close.’
He drew his dagger in his right hand.
Grégoire said, ‘It’s the cage.’
He ran towards the garbage. Tannhauser took another oily breath and blew it out. He gestured to Stefano to wait and set off after Grégoire. Juste trotted behind him.
‘Grégoire.’
The cage lay on its side by the jetty. Grégoire stood staring at the monkeys. They were dead. The tiny bodies were heaped upon the slats in limp tangles of limbs, heads and tails.
‘They came all that way across the ocean. And all they needed was water.’
‘We have to go.’ Tannhauser squeezed the boy’s shoulder.
‘Look – there – they tried to chew through the bars. To get free.’
‘We tried to help them.’
‘We didn’t try very hard.’
‘No, we didn’t.’
Tannhauser noticed a dog and a pig contesting a heap of naked corpses in the trash. The bodies looked stiff enough to have died hours before. He pulled both boys away, before Juste could spot them.
Tannhauser crossed the square with his entourage. Stefano directed him along the river, due east, past wharves and a broad stairway down to the beach. At the next turn he headed north towards the street along which, if he had his bearings right, he had seen the Duke of Guise lead his assassins. A halberdier stood guard. He glanced at the cross on Tannhauser’s chest, and at Stefano bringing up the rear, and did nothing to delay them.
Tannhauser forged ahead, crossing over, keeping close to the buildings on the far side of the street. His eyesight adjusted. With the torch ten paces behind him anyone coming towards him would see only its flames.
The quartier was a patchwork of inns, boarding houses and artisanal businesses devoted to the special trades required by the palace. He caught the scents of candle wax and turpentine. Behind the lightless windows and locked doors he sensed huddled families praying for day. Some doors were smeared with crude white crosses. Their locks had proved no barrier, for they had been smashed from their hinges, and those who had hidden behind them had been slaughtered within and without. Barefooted bodies sprawled in the filth, their nightshirts badged with wet black stains.
A wedge of buildings cut a fork in the road before him, the wider arm curving east, the narrower north. He headed east. More doors, more corpses cooling in coagulating pools. Alleys opened right and left, then an archway, now another street to his right. He followed the curve, the alleys and gated yards multiplying, until he saw a larger crossroads and, in the distance beyond, torches by the dozen, bunched and milling in the blackness. Shouts of triumph; of bloodlust not yet requited. The sweep’s momentum had spent itself in a mob of horses and men.
He glanced back. Stefano lumbered into view, festooned with boys. As Tannhauser turned to the crossroads, he saw a man sneak from the last of the alleys on the far side of the street.
The man was wigless and though not much over thirty as bald as a monk. He was stark naked but for a single shoe. Tannhauser loped across the street, the tolling bell masking his footsteps. He saw no confederates. A leather purse hung round the wigless one’s neck and judging by the way it swung its contents were heavy. He carried a long dagger in his left hand, like one who had little idea how to use it. As he limped towards Stefano and the boys, Tannhauser fell on him from behind.
He approached on the oblique and trapped the fellow’s knife hand by the wrist. At the same time he stabbed him behind the collarbones, again over the shoulder. As the hilt thumped home he churned the blade and felt the vital tissues rend and burst. Whatever life was, it fled in an instant yet its passage was palpable. The corpse dropped to its knees without a spasm or a sound. As it fell Tannhauser steadied it upright with the hilt and grabbed the drawstring of the purse and looped it forward and untangled it from the ears and chin. He pulled his dagger free, alert for spray but blood’s force had spent itself inside the chest. He let the bald skull flop backwards into the gutter. He chased the gore from his blade with a flick and sheathed it.
The soft leather purse was impregnated with perfume and Tannhauser took a deep sniff. He knew the heft of gold pieces without needing to look. It had a strap to permit firm attachment to a belt. He stooped for the dead man’s dagger – Milanese, he guessed, a third the length of a sword, and well suited to tight spaces. The pristine steel, the lapis lazuli pommel and the small side ring suggested it had been commissioned as a parade piece, but its lethality had not been compromised. With its sheath it would be worth as much as the gold in the sack, but the she
ath was nowhere to be seen.
He stowed the dagger in the back of his belt, the hilt towards his right elbow. He stripped the dead hands of two rings. He put them in the pouch. For the first time he looked at his victim’s face, but its features were lost in the gloom. He stretched and grimaced.
Torchlight approached and with it the steady tread of Stefano. When he saw Tannhauser, he shook the sweat from his eyes. Orlandu was still breathing in his arms. Juste tilted the torch and he and Grégoire stared at the dead man, who lay nude and leaking blood, his body folded backwards at the knees as if slaughtered while committing some act of perversion. They watched Tannhauser buckle the purse at his side.
‘You robbed him?’ said Juste.
‘No fort is so strong that it can’t be taken with gold, and we must take Paris.’
‘I don’t believe Cicero intended to justify murder.’
‘The man was dead before we met him, which is why he was armed and desperate. You were in his path. And Cicero justified the plundering of half the world.’ He looked at Stefano. ‘Have we far to go to find the surgeon?’
Stefano pointed with his chin. ‘A little way beyond the commotion.’
Tannhauser started towards the crossroads a hundred paces distant, but heard the sound of running behind them. He turned.
Two young nobles, or so he supposed them to be from their gaudy costume, emerged from the same alley as had the naked man. Each wore a white linen cross pinned to his cap. They carried rapiers over their shoulders, neither one blooded. They were panting and frightened but recovered some bravado on escaping the slit. They noticed the corpse and the shorter fell to searching it with mounting indignation. They noticed Tannhauser.
Tannhauser walked on.
‘Ho! Sirrah! We were after this heretic!’
Tannhauser kept going and considered it an act of mercy. The two hurried to overtake him. Juste grabbed Grégoire’s hand, and the torch he held, released from its double grip, swayed towards Orlandu’s head. Tannhauser took the torch from him and held it high and to his left. He stopped, for the rash pair barred his way, their swords still shouldered as if this were the current fashion.
‘That was our heretic,’ said the shorter.
Tannhauser saw no witnesses in range. He looked at Juste.
‘What might Cicero say to this?’
‘What a marvellous question,’ said the taller of the youths.
Juste said, ‘O praeclarum custodem ovium lupum.’
‘My Latin is poor,’ said Tannhauser.
The taller young noble smiled, eager to be helpful.
‘He said: how splendid a protector of sheep is the wolf. But Cicero was almost certainly employing irony. After all, he did coin the word. Don’t you agree, George?’
‘That was our heretic. We flushed him out.’
Tannhauser stepped within the limit of their rapiers, where they were useless and he could get to grips. Each youth flinched but had sufficient pride and stupidity to hold his ground. Their faces were those of creatures who expected the world to conform to their every whim, because the world had never done otherwise.
‘Get out of my way.’
George held Tannhauser’s eyes, oblivious to what he was looking at.
‘The heretic stole Nicole’s dagger.’
He pointed to an empty sheath on Nicole’s sword belt. Nicole obligingly turned to display it. The sheath was enamelled and chased with silver wire and lapis lazuli.
‘We want the dagger back,’ said George.
‘The dagger is spoil.’
‘So now you have stolen it.’
‘Courtesy would have won its return. That opportunity has passed.’
‘And you’ve stolen the heretic’s gold, too.’
‘George, detain me no longer. I am in the killing vein.’
Nicole stepped to one side, but out of obedience, not martial guile.
‘The dagger is of no great importance, chevalier,’ said Nicole. ‘It was a gift to my late father, and he had so many, why, I can’t even remember from whom. And the gold isn’t ours anyway, nor, in any case, do we need it. So we shan’t detain you any longer at all.’
George’s instincts remained wanting. He pointed a finger at Juste.
‘Who is this boy so black in dress and so white with fear?’
‘Be off, egg. Or be cracked.’
George tilted the sword from his shoulder.
‘I’ll not be seen off by a thief.’
Tannhauser doubted he intended much more than to strike a petulant posture, in order to get his way, a method he had probably refined in dealings with his mother. But such were the hazards of going about armed, and seeking the excitement of killing, in the middle of a massacre. He stuffed the head of the torch into George’s mouth and stepped to his left, drawing the contended dagger from the back of his belt.
George’s shrieks were muffled by flames. His nostrils sucked up tendrils of fire. Burning naphtha ran down his chin and set light to his doublet. He dropped his sword and grabbed the torch and Tannhauser let him take it. He stabbed the little turd in the side of the neck, the outer edge angled downward so that he might exert more weight when it came to the pull. The dagger was so sharp, his thrust drove it through to the quillions. George squirmed and gargled. His right hand gashed itself bloody on the blade transfixing his gullet, his left waving the torch at arm’s length. Tannhauser knocked his cap off and seized him by the hair to hold him still. He looked at Nicole. He leaned into the pull and divided George’s windpipe and severed his throat entire. A tide of gore drenched George’s chest and spurted up past his ears, and with it spilled his life and all his dreams of manhood. The torch hit the ground, and so did George.
Nicole gaped, as if frozen by a vision of a nightmare world, where he and his titles meant nothing and were worth even less. He moved not a muscle. He uttered a thin cry.
‘Nicole, drop your sword and give your belt to this lad. Quickly now.’
Nicole unbuckled his belt and handed it Grégoire. He twisted his lips in an attempt to further prove his acquiescence. Tannhauser stepped over and stabbed him and burst his heart. He chased blood from the blade’s grooves. It was at once pristine.
‘Grégoire, give me the sheath for this dagger. Leave the sword here.’
Juste said, ‘You didn’t give them a chance.’
‘A better chance than they’d have given you. Or your brethren.’
Tannhauser plucked the white linen crosses from the dead men’s caps. He retrieved the torch. He gave the crosses to Grégoire and Juste.
‘Wear these on your chest, they will mark you servants of the Pope. And ask Grégoire to teach you the Ave. His Latin is excellent.’
Neither dead youth had carried a purse on their homicidal jaunt, the only intelligent, if unwelcome, decision they had made. Tannhauser took the ornate sheath from Grégoire and slid in the dagger and stowed it in his belt. He spoke to Stefano in Italian.
‘You are my accomplice in this.’
‘In what, sire? Two brave loyalists slain in pursuit of a dangerous rebel?’
‘Stefano? You’ve doubled your share of the gold.’
Tannhauser and his band reached the crossroads, where the powder smoke smelled as strong as brimstone and drifted in swags on the hot and windless air. Corpses were everywhere strewn in great numbers. They watched as a dozen dazed prisoners were herded at spear point to stand before a rank of arquebusiers, twice their number. The latter blew on their matches and checked their pans. At a series of commands, they aimed and fired, and the luckless Huguenots were smitten down in a vortex of lead and smoke, some so close to the muzzles that their clothing sprang briefly ablaze. Not all died in the salvo and these lay calling out to God until the Swiss moved among them like gardeners hoeing weeds, and finished them off with their glaives.
Warnings were shouted to those below as corpses were pitched from windows and roofs. Elsewhere, by the light of torches, more guards dragged the dead into leaking, satu
rated piles, some of them recruiting horses and ropes to the job. Boots, hooves and bodies alike slithered through the puddled blood and churned it up with the street filth into a nocuous batter that was splattered far and wide. A lone gunshot flared beyond the rooftops. There would be a few last hares to flush and run down, and a wagon of sawdust could be put to good use, but on the whole a dirty job appeared well done.
Bells still rang all over the city.
Tannhauser called to a guard who seemed underemployed.
‘You, soldier, run to the church and silence that bell. Corporal?’
He glanced at Stefano. Stefano barked.
‘Do as his Excellency says. Jump to it.’
As they got closer to the Hôtel Béthizy, it was clear that some of the Huguenots had put up a stiff fight while going under, probably in an attempt to reach Admiral Coligny. Among the dead were men with crosses on their caps or white armbands on their sleeves. Wounded Catholics lay on cloaks or blankets, tended by friends. George and Nicole would raise no eyebrows on the Rue Béthizy. Tannhauser pressed on. In that numbed bewilderment that tends to follow a slaughter, no one was inclined to bother them.
The horsemen up the street started forward at the amble. Those in their path made haste for either side of the street. Tannhauser herded the boys out of the thoroughfare. The riders were richly dressed and superbly mounted on some of the finest gaited palfreys in the country. Even by the light of flames the muscles of the horses shimmered like silk, their hooves stepping high through the muck. Tannhauser wanted one. At the head of the column was a man scarcely older than George, but the contrast in character was great. He shouted, as if to reinforce a point.
‘Remember! It is the King’s command!’
Tannhauser realised this was Henri, Duke of Guise, champion of Catholic Paris, and commander of these nocturnal revels. Guise had fought at Saint-Denis, Jarnac and Moncontour, and had even travelled to Hungary to campaign against the Turks. Perhaps for that latter reason in particular, when he saw the Maltese Cross on Tannhauser’s chest he slowed his horse and saluted. Tannhauser didn’t bother to return it. Their eyes met in the torchlight and Guise, giddy on blood and glory, smiled as he rode on by. A number of his followers saluted, too.
