by Tim Willocks
At the crossroads, Guise turned south towards the river. As the last of his horsemen rode from sight, the bell of the nearby church stopped tolling. Though others more distant continued, it felt as if silence had fallen.
Stefano said, ‘There is the Hôtel Béthizy.’
The narrow-fronted building and its courtyard were less imposing than Tannhauser had hoped. The second-storey windows gaped open. A variety of armed men milled around the yard. Lying in the gutter beneath the windows was the bloodstained body of an old man in his nightshirt. A gentleman took it upon himself to kick the corpse in the face. A second followed suit. Tannhauser realised who the old man was. A third bravo, not to be outdone, took out his cock and started to piss on the remains of Gaspard de Coligny.
Coligny had come to provoke a war and he had died a fool. Yet he had also been a famous soldier and the spectacle did not sit well with Tannhauser.
He strode over, grabbing a half-pike from a stack against the wall, and struck the pisser in the base of the skull with the iron-shod butt. The pisser dropped at the feet of his companions, whose laughter abruptly ceased, and lay there insensible, pissing on himself. Tannhauser looked at the others and they looked away. He returned the pike.
He grasped each boy by a thin shoulder. He mustered a smile.
‘You two lads have proved yourselves my hardy, stout and resolute mates.’
Grégoire’s mouth fell open. Juste dropped his gaze.
‘But though we have reached one goal, others beckon. Juste, Master Paré may not feel inclined to help us, so you, as his co-religionist, will help me win him over. Grégoire, there are stables hereabouts whose rich and eminent clients will never return to claim their mounts, and I am tired of treading in shit. Go and find me the finest horse in the neighbourhood.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dogs on Fire
SYMONNE D’AUBRAY’S reaction to the news that her house might come under attack was to sit on her bed in her nightgown and stare into the gloom like someone who had lost her wits. Childbearing had left her plump, yet it sat well with her sweet, rosy features. When Carla suggested she get dressed and that they rouse the children, Symonne appeared not to hear a word. She was younger than Carla, twenty-nine years old, and a woman of intelligence and enterprise, but even the most steadfast mind could be undone by fear. Perhaps the poor woman was revisiting memories of her husband, Roger, murdered by a mob during a previous persecution less than a year ago, during the Gastines riots. Carla did not press her. She laid out Symonne’s clothes on the bed.
‘I’ll wake the children. Then I’ll help you put up your hair.’
As Carla reached the door, Symonne said, ‘If we are not prepared to suffer under the cross, we betray our faith in the promise of salvation. These afflictions are imposed by God to test that faith.’
Carla heard the echo of Symonne’s husband in the brave words. In Symonne’s voice, she heard only desperation and defeat. There seemed no point in theological debate. Carla left without speaking.
Her heart pounded and her stomach churned. She thought of Mattias and his strength and wished he were here. She laboured up the stairs, candlestick in hand, already tired, the weight of her child enormous. She woke the housekeeper, Denise and her husband Didier, sleeping in the roof space. She roused the D’Aubray children in their beds. They sat up blinking. Antoinette, at six years old the youngest, asked for water.
‘It’s still dark,’ said Martin, at twelve the eldest.
Carla forced a smile. ‘Martin, you’re the man of the house. I want you to make sure you all get fully dressed as quickly as you can.’
‘Why?’ asked Charité.
‘Do as Martin tells you and come down to the parlour,’ said Carla. ‘Your mother and I will explain everything there.’
‘Should we wash?’ said Martin.
‘No,’ said Carla. ‘Just get dressed. Quickly now. Wear stout shoes.’
Carla went back to her own room and closed the door. She leaned her back against it and caught her breath. The despair she had sensed in Symonne crept into her heart. Despair was more poisonous than fear. She put her hands on her belly and felt her child.
Her body encompassed his; her waters washed around him. Mattias had suggested, though he had taken pains to point out that it was only a speculation based in alchemical possibility, that everything that went through her went through the babe and in some sense found a home in his growing being, for, after all, the babe was a part of her and was being made from her deepest fibre. With this in mind, she had taken pains throughout her pregnancy to share with the babe her most inspired and elevated feelings. Her love for Mattias, her joy in horses and Nature, her exhilaration while riding in the wind, even, while asleep, her most marvellous dreams. In part she had taken this journey to impart to him a love of adventure. She would not nurture him now, at this crucial juncture, the verge of his birth, with fear and despair.
The Siege of Malta had taught her that hope, and faith in God, could conquer desperation even at its darkest, and that when hope and faith were exhausted there remained yet a final refuge in defiance. She thought again of Mattias. She should have been more patient. She shouldn’t have left on such a whim. She heard him laugh, as if to say he would have expected no less, and she saw his face, and she thought that her heart might burst.
She heard a sound from the street and went to the window. Twelve armed men marched south in the direction of the Place de Grève. Though incapable of keeping in step and not in uniform, one carried a drum and another a flag. Each wore a white band around his arm and a white cross pinned to his hat.
Carla leaned out over the window sill.
‘Messieurs! Good sirs, your attention, please.’
‘That’s a Huguenot house,’ said one.
‘Remember Roger D’Aubray?’ said a second.
‘Aye and he was a right bastard.’
Their leader looked up without stopping. ‘Stay indoors.’
‘We are threatened with burglary and murder by a gang of criminals –’
‘The Huguenots are in revolt. We militia are called out to stop them.’
‘They’ve tried to kill the King!’
‘God save His Majesty!’ A rough cheer was joined.
‘I am no Huguenot.’ The words almost stuck in Carla’s throat. ‘I am a Catholic noblewoman in grave danger. There are children here.’
‘Stay home and lock your doors. It’s the safest place.’
‘We are not safe.’
Her baby kicked. Anger flared inside her. The candle flame trembled.
‘On your honour. Will not any of you brave men stay to defend me?’
The militia marched on without another word. As their torches disappeared into the darkness, Carla sensed figures moving in the shadows on the far side of the street. She heard a dog bark. Another replied and then another. She was sure she heard a voice curse. Then she wasn’t sure. She closed the window. She fingered the small gold crucifix at her throat.
The house could not be defended against determined invaders. The new style was far from the miniature forts of the old. The windows were too many; it was designed to let light in, not to keep burglars out. On the streets three women, four children and a manservant would be devoured. Estelle said that they were coming for Carla, the woman from the south. Was her presence a danger to the family? Should she escape the house alone with Altan Savas, as he had suggested? The Temple wasn’t far, a quarter-hour even at her pace. Could she leave Symonne and her children to their fate? The siege had also imbued her with the ethic of loyalty. But she realised that if deserting them might save her baby, she would. She would let them all die.
She thanked God that Orlandu was not here. She wished Mattias was.
She felt a moment of absolute helplessness. She had a sudden urge to surrender, to give herself over to these unknown enemies, to abandon resistance. The idea produced a sense of relief. She remembered she had once seen a sheep surprised by one of her dogs. The s
heep stood quite still while the dog tore at its throat. It made no attempt to run or to shy away from the teeth. When the dog paused to choke up a mouthful of wool, the sheep stood quivering on the spot, waiting for the dog to resume its attack. The spectacle of a terror so profound had disturbed her. She had felt no pity for the sheep; only disgust. The sheep had deserved to die. Symonne downstairs was in the same state as that sheep. The dog had gone on to kill a dozen more in a frenzy, and Carla hadn’t been able to stop him.
Carla had to move.
She went back to the children’s room and found them half-dressed and squabbling. Again she ordered them below. Antoinette, who was still in her nightgown, started crying. Charité took her hand.
‘To the parlour, now.’ Carla stamped her foot. ‘You can cry down there.’
In the parlour their instruments were still laid out from recent rehearsals. Carla had no plan but the instruments offered a means of keeping the children occupied, and a disciplined routine with which they were familiar.
‘Everybody sit down and tune up.’
‘But it’s still dark,’ whined Lucien. ‘And I’m hungry.’
‘Martin, I leave you in charge. If you’re not ready when I return, there will be trouble.’
The other room on this floor was the master bedroom. Carla looked in on Symonne. She hadn’t moved, her clothes still spread on the bed beside her. Carla left her alone and found Denise and Didier had come down. She could not imagine either of them would be anything other than a handicap in the coming fight. She wished she had left them asleep. Martin issued half-hearted orders. Gut strings pinged.
‘Denise, make the children some breakfast,’ said Carla. ‘Didier, let us see if we can help Altan Savas. Madame is unwell. Do exactly as I say.’
They followed her down the main stair to the hallway, bewildered and made even more afraid by the mention of Altan’s name. She explained nothing. She did not know what to explain. Noises came from the rear hall, clatters, blows and grunts, but not of combat. She found Altan Savas rigging a variety of wedges and timber props, improvised from planks that he appeared to have ripped from the floor, in such a way as to buttress the lock and hinges of the back door against the hole the planks left behind. Altan Savas did not seem much impressed, though Carla was. He glanced at Didier as if the man was a woman or worse. He beckoned her back towards the entrance hall that enclosed the front door and the foot of the staircase. He pointed to her candle and motioned about with his hands.
‘Candles, here. Here. Many, many. Light.’
‘Didier,’ said Carla. ‘Tell Denise to forget our food. Both of you place as many lamps and candles as you can find here in the hallway and light them. Quickly, now.’
Altan stabbed a finger at the front door.
‘The bad men come. Here. Yes.’
‘Yes, I know, we can’t stop them getting in,’ said Carla. She did not plan to but she found herself asking him, ‘Tell me, can we go? Can we get away, just you and I?’ She made a walking gesture with her fingers, and pointed to his chest and to hers.
Altan nodded. ‘Yes. You want?’
Carla didn’t answer. She heard the pluck of strings above, the sleepy voices.
She shook her head.
Altan pointed to the back door. ‘They want to come there. To be not seen.’ He threw back the bolt on the front door so that only the lock held it. ‘But we make they come here.’ He again gestured about then nodded up the stairs and made the motion of drawing and firing an arrow downwards. ‘When many dead, they go.’
Carla understood. Encourage the invaders to come through the front door on Rue du Temple, where there was at least a chance of others witnessing the assault and summoning help. Then use the front hallway as a killing ground, defending the stairs from the first-floor landing outside the parlour and the master bedroom. If enough of them were killed, if the price was bloody enough – and she was certain Altan Savas would drive a hard bargain – the others would give up.
She felt hope rise in her chest.
‘Yes, yes. Good. Mattias would be happy.’
Didier brought in a pair of candelabra and Denise began lighting the wall lamps. From above came the sound of reluctant bows sawing at strings.
‘Should I join them?’ She pointed upstairs.
Altan nodded. ‘One candle. Not more.’
Carla took her seat with her viola da gamba propped almost against her belly. The position required her to bend and stretch awkwardly to finger and bow, but she had adapted. She knew that when she played the instrument vibrated against her womb. The music filled her child’s entire universe. She had been playing to him all his life and she knew he loved it. Music had nurtured him as surely as had her blood.
She had played for her dead child, Bors, too, throughout his life inside her. Even now it consoled her to know that his existence had been filled with the purest beauty. And if it was so, as Mattias, following Petrus Grubenius, insisted, that in the womb there is, and can be, no such thing as Time, but only Before Time, then Bors had heard her play through that same eternity which ruled before the dawn of creation. As Mattias said, Bors had not only always listened to her music, he had listened to her music for forever.
She took her bow and looked at the children. Their eyes were wide in the semi-dark, not even sure whether or not they should be afraid.
‘We did not play for the Queen so we will play for your mother.’
‘Maman has heard us before,’ said Antoinette.
‘True. But not as she will hear us now, for we will play like never before.’
Carla counted off and they began the chanson spirituelle that she had composed for the occasion of the royal wedding. It was a rondeau for four voices, one human, sung by Martin, and three instrumental. Antoinette had a recorder part, often improvised but rarely, thanks to Carla’s glances, catastrophic.
Previously Carla had been much concerned in their practice with achieving a respectable performance. This morning she played for herself and her baby. She closed her eyes. If her baby was not going to emerge into Time at all, if all he would ever know was forever, then she would try her best to fill it with magic and not with her terror. She let the music, the wood, the gut strings, her skin and muscle and bone, carry her deep into his world, into the world Before Time.
If they died, together, then together they would continue into the world Beyond Time. She thought of Mattias whose spirit, she believed, was near as large as eternity – for as he might say, What right soul is not? – and could encompass all things and all loss. She grieved for the pain that would gore him. Yet Mattias would endure until he joined them, as she knew he would, for any Paradise inclined to reject him she would scorn. The baby joined them, here and now. They all three played together. Somehow she knew that the baby sensed his father and felt his presence through her.
When Martin’s voice stuck in his throat, Carla did not waver.
When Antoinette dropped her recorder, she did not care.
When Lucien and Charité stopped playing, Carla played on.
When the battering of metal on wood began, and Symonne started screaming and the children joined in, Carla closed her ears to their din.
She played on.
When glass began to shatter all over the house, Carla did not open her eyes nor did she miss a note. She played on and her baby listened and he loved her and she loved him. Let Death, too, join them in their song if he would. They would die amid love and music.
She did not stop playing until Altan Savas wrenched the gambo violl from her hands. She didn’t open her eyes until he pulled her to her feet and out of the parlour.
The big window which lit the hallway from over the main front door gaped glassless but for saw-toothed fragments in the rabbets. Stones and lead balls lay among the gleaming debris and the overturned candles on the tiles of the hallway floor. At the foot of the stairs the front door shuddered in its frame with blows from the street. They alternated between the upper hinge and the low
er. Two hammers. The door was heavy but no door is stronger than its hinges and the hinges rattled and twisted on creaking screws. Throughout the house more windows burst with such exuberance that one might think them freed from bondage, their original purpose fulfilled. Above the clamour of despair from the parlour, Carla heard strange animal yowls and human curses.
Altan’s hand was immensely strong. His grip hurt her arm.
He shouted in her ear. ‘We go, now.’
He released her and Carla followed him down the stairs without questioning the change of plan. Altan wore his Turkish horn bow on one shoulder. He drew the short, heavy-bladed Messer sword that he favoured. He drew a dagger. Carla felt a hand grab hold of hers. It was Antoinette’s. Carla held onto it and pulled her along.
Halfway down the staircase their limbs were quaked by a hideous squeal that seemed torn from the outraged spirit of all living things. A spiral of flame erupted outside the jagged frame above them, and, as if the hole were a portal to some darker and more vicious Hell than any of those the prophets had foretold, a dog on fire soared through the broken window towards them.
Antoinette screamed. For the first time, Carla screamed too.
She dragged the girl behind her, stumbling back up the steps as Altan hacked the piteous animal, alight from neck to tail, in mid-air. The sword cut the dog half through its mid-section and hurled it to the tiles in a smoking frenzy, its jaws panting and agape, its eyes whited with terror, its muscles squirming beneath the flames. Its paws scrabbled and skated in the tinkling shards and with a howl it took off down the corridor.
Carla retreated further as a second burning dog came through the window.
She could smell the pine pitch in which it was smeared. The stench of burning fur and flesh turned her stomach. She felt Antoinette’s fingers clinging to her skirts, heard the girl’s racking sobs. As the second dog writhed to its feet, the first returned down the hall in its blind sprint of agony and panic, the fire fluttering, the yowls pitiful to hear. The two blazing animals collided and exchanged snarls, and seemed about to fall to fighting, then exploded together up the stairs. Altan Savas kicked them aside, tongues of fuel flaring from his boots, and spread his arms wide about Carla and Antoinette.
