Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  ‘Is she pregnant?’

  Juste hesitated. His eyes darted this way and that.

  ‘Is she carrying a baby inside her? Is her belly swollen?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, she is pregnant, perhaps.’ Juste’s pallor turned red. ‘That is, I don’t know for sure. I can’t. She is stabbed, cut –’ He made vague gestures about his torso.

  ‘Did you see the baby? Did they cut it out of her? Speak, lad.’

  ‘No, I don’t know. I don’t know! I am sorry.’

  Tannhauser took a breath. ‘I’m not angry with you. Please. Go on.’

  ‘She is – kneeling, her face down. There are – things – stuck in her.’

  ‘Things?’

  ‘A chair. The leg of a chair, but the chair is still complete – ’

  Juste covered his mouth, perhaps to stop his words; perhaps his nausea.

  Tannhauser turned away. He couldn’t let the boy see his face. He was in the wrong. He should go and look for himself. Yet he felt less able to do so than before. He reached out to pat Juste. Juste cringed away.

  ‘Juste, I shouldn’t have asked you to see that. Forgive me.’

  ‘I am glad to protect you. It wasn’t so bad as seeing my brothers.’

  ‘No. That must have been worse.’

  He wondered if there were not some small satisfaction in the youngster’s heart. If there were, he could hardly blame him. Perhaps that was his own malice speaking.

  ‘Go and wait with Grégoire and Clementine.’

  ‘I didn’t go up to the floor above.’

  ‘Were there any other bodies in the chamber?’

  ‘No. Just – the woman. What are you going to do?

  ‘Go and wait outside.’

  When Juste was out of sight Tannhauser gave in and vomited into the blood caked around his feet. He felt better. He headed up the staircase.

  The dead footman, the parlour of dead children, Symonne D’Aubray strung by the ankle from two yards of gold braid, all as Juste had described. The severed genitals lying by the back door had belonged to no one here. The victims had been cut and stabbed numerous times, their hands and arms slashed, killed with enthusiasm but without skill, without knowledge of the lethal organs and vessels. The man who had killed Altan would have known better. His crew were not seasoned cutthroats, but even among criminals, killers were few.

  Tannhauser climbed a narrower stair and found two bedrooms, both stripped. In the second room he smelled Carla. Her natural scent. The perfumes she favoured. He quelled a surge of grief. He was not entitled to it.

  Fresh soot lay piled in the hearth and was smeared on the floor. Now that he looked back, it was smeared in small tracks out of the door. An old trick. They had sent a little boy down the chimney to open the door. Obviously, he had failed. He was certain Carla would not have permitted the killing of a child.

  He saw a chamber pot, half-full. Grief swelled from his chest and up through the bones of his face, a black tide of sorrow and shame, love indistinguishable from penetrating pain. He leaned out of the broken window to the rear and breathed deep. He had scolded Juste for less. Much less. He had slapped him. He choked on some inchoate sound expelled by his deepest vitals.

  ‘Master?’ Juste’s voice rose from the garden below. He was afraid.

  The sound had been louder than Tannhauser realised. He mastered himself.

  ‘Don’t fear,’ he called in reply.

  He had hoped to find a corpse whose head he might have paraded around the fouler taverns of the Ville; but they had taken their dead away with them. No small chore and surely not to honour their fallen. They – he, the dangerous one – did not want to be identified.

  Tannhauser left the room and went down the narrow steps. At the top of the main staircase he hesitated. The bedchamber door was just behind him. He should at least cover her up. But with what? Anguish. Nausea. Rage. He did not know how to do the right thing any more. The very notion of right seemed a lie. He could not bear to see Carla butchered and pierced by the leg of a chair. He did not want to smell her blood, or whatever else they had deposited inside her and on her. He had walked through sacked towns the world over. He had seen such things, the same things, the ugliest things, too many times before. He had heard the laughter, the excitement, the glee, of those who thought they were inventing such atrocities, when in truth they were as old as human time.

  He could bear it. He took a step towards the chamber and stopped.

  The part of his mind that remained always cold stopped him; the part that knew no feeling and mistrusted the parts that did. He would need his judgement. He would need some bridle on his sanity. The coldness, cold as it was and well as it knew him, had no idea what the violation might provoke.

  He could not risk seeing Carla as he would find her in that room.

  He did not want to remember her that way.

  He did not want such an image to join the others.

  He could not blind what little was left of his humanity.

  Tears rose in his throat and he was ashamed and amazed.

  He swallowed them.

  He would find a priest to consecrate her remains.

  Then he would see her.

  He continued down the stairs and out of the death house into the street.

  The Rue du Temple was still quiet. Right by the front door, so incongruous that it had escaped his attention, stood a heavy wooden chair. On the pavement by the chair was a pewter cup near filled with wine. He imagined the master criminal enjoying his triumph. Tannhauser sat on the chair. He picked up the cup and sniffed the wine and took a sip. He swilled out his mouth and spat. Then swallowed a mouthful. It was good. From a pocket sewn into his sword belt he pulled a Jerusalem whetstone and put it in the wine to soak.

  Grégoire and Juste returned with a sheet of mouldy hemp.

  ‘We found this in the cellar,’ said Juste. ‘If it please you –’

  ‘With your permission–’

  ‘We’ll cover your wife with it. And take away the chair.’

  ‘And say a prayer for her.’

  ‘I would like that,’ said Tannhauser. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You should say a prayer for her, too,’ said Juste.

  ‘Carla needed many things from me and did not get them.’

  He furrowed his brow at a trembling mass concealed in Grégoire’s shirt.

  ‘Are we truly your hardy, stout and resolute mates?’ asked Juste.

  ‘What have you got there?’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘We found this is in the cellar, too, master.’

  Grégoire produced a small, ugly but muscular mongrel by the scruff of its neck. It panted rapidly, eyes bright with shock, its mouth a toothy rictus. Its body was scorched in a patchwork of singed hair and raw skin.

  ‘Can we keep him?’ asked Juste.

  Tannhauser said, ‘He will slow us down.’

  ‘Master, he can run faster than us, or even Clementine, I’m sure.’

  ‘He can guard us when we sleep,’ said Juste.

  ‘He’s very brave.’

  ‘I don’t approve,’ said Tannhauser. ‘He stinks.’

  ‘We’ll wash him,’ said Grégoire.

  ‘You won’t smell him from high on Clementine’s back,’ said Juste.

  ‘So you’re in this together.’

  Tannhauser fished the whetstone from the wine and drew the dagger he had stolen. He sighted down the edges and decided to lower the angle. The boys stepped back.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Juste.

  ‘I’m going to cut new edges on this blade.’

  The morning light revealed an inscription on the dagger’s ricasso. On one side: Fiat justitia. On the other: et pereat mundus. He showed it to Juste.

  ‘Can you read this for me?’

  ‘Let justice be done – though the world perish.’

  Tannhauser drew the blade across the whetstone. The feel of grit on steel
soothed him. As the material world around him dissolved, these materials at least he could believe in. The hard honed by the hardest and greased by wine.

  Grégoire tried to put the dog back in his shirt but its wriggling betrayed him.

  ‘Does that poor cur have a name?’

  ‘We didn’t want to name him too soon, in case you decided to kill him,’ said Juste.

  ‘Because if you gave him a name his death would make you more sad?’

  They both nodded.

  ‘You protect your feelings at his expense. A dog without a name may be easier to lose, but he’s also easier to kill.’

  The boys looked at each other in alarm. They looked at the blade.

  ‘Did not the naming of Clementine transform her from a carthorse into a myth?’

  They both opened their mouths at once but he stopped them.

  ‘I never killed a dog in all my life. Carla doted on them. I’m simply giving you a lesson. I’m hurt that you think me capable of such a deed.’

  ‘We are very sorry, master.’

  He wondered if his dead and unborn child had been a daughter or a son. Though he had not said so to Carla, he had hoped for a daughter. A daughter needed no instruction in the arts of war or in how to handle the pain of being a man.

  ‘Master, why did they burn the dogs?’ asked Juste.

  ‘Out of the eater, something to eat. Out of the strong, something sweet.’

  ‘The riddle of Samson,’ cried Juste. ‘He set fire to the tails of three hundred foxes and burned the crops of the Philistines. And in revenge the Philistines burned Samson’s wife –’ Juste stopped. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And he smote them hip and thigh with a great slaughter,’ said Tannhauser.

  For a moment he was lost in thought, yet his thoughts were empty.

  The boys shuffled as if still uncertain of their dog’s fate.

  ‘Cover Carla with her shroud. Go on. And give that cur some water.’

  ‘Juste?’ said Grégoire. ‘I named Clementine, so you should name the dog.’

  They headed for the alley, at once deep in discussion.

  Tannhauser watched them out of sight.

  The street was still in shade but getting hotter. He sleeved sweat from his brow. He felt choked again, though provoked by which sentiment he could not say, for too many competed for the honour. He drew the blade of the lapis lazuli dagger across the whetstone. He raised the burr and polished the edge with the slurry of wine, grit and metal. He blunted the tip sufficient to render it less inclined to lodge too deep in bone. He sheathed it on his right hip. From his left hip he drew his own dagger.

  There was a void inside him that could only be filled with blood. Not knowledge, nor mourning, nor God, nor love; for this yearning for blood was his truth and the measure of his failure as a man. It had taken him a lifetime to learn nothing. Again he must be Death’s bondsman. He would solve the riddles. He would descend to the floor of the pit. Yet he knew there was not blood enough in Paris to fill the void, nor in the perishing of the world. Even so, he would spill it. Sooner or later the blood would be his and then, perhaps, he could rest.

  He drained the cup of wine.

  He sat by the dead dog in the gutter and sharpened his weapons.

  He realised that the bells had stopped tolling.

  PART THREE

  FALSE SHADOWS FOR TRUE SUBSTANCES

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Cockaigne

  IN A TWO-WHEELED cart, on a mattress stained with blood, Carla and her unborn child travelled west into the thick of the Ville.

  Towards the Yards.

  And the kingdom of Cockaigne.

  The narrow street was deserted but for the plunder train, five carts in all with Carla’s in the van. Grymonde led from the front. The dogs capered among them, their recent indignities forgotten in hope of reward. Papin and Bigot, the brawniest of the scurvies, hauled on the shafts of Carla’s cart and grimaced through the trickles of sweat that muddied the dirt on their faces. They had orders not to speak to her and neither glanced in her direction. Antoinette lay curled at Carla’s ankles and clung to her skirts, entirely mute. Carla was grateful for her silence; she had nothing to give the girl beyond a chance to survive. Everything else she had, all that she was, she needed for her baby.

  Carla would not have felt much more exposed if she had been nude. Her thighs were wet and slimy. Her waters had left dark stains on the pale gold linen of her gown. The ache in her back was severe and she pushed her hands into her loins without finding relief. Grymonde had filled the front of the cart with her baggage, along with cases of musical instruments and Altan’s bow and quiver. The mattress was doubled over in the wagon bed, along with a heap of pillows, but despite this gesture she could not get comfortable.

  She did not expect to.

  At a broader cross street Grymonde raised his hand and the train stopped. He disappeared for what seemed like a long time. His gang maintained a hush that at first surprised her, yet their terror of Grymonde was tangible.

  In the quiet she noticed that the whole city seemed still.

  She had got used to the ceaseless din that accompanied daylight and its absence was striking. Yet she could sense the hidden multitudes. It was as if the whole city, like the gang, was holding its breath. She was reminded of the first day of the Siege of Malta, when, in the hour before the first battle commenced, a similar eerie quiet had prevailed.

  Grymonde came back, scrubbing his palms on his thighs. He waved the caravan forward. As the cart lurched into motion, a fresh contraction tightened on Carla’s innards.

  She scrambled onto her knees and turned to face the backboard. She clung onto its timbers with both hands. She lowered her head between her arms and sucked for breath. She held her groans inside. The spasm was so inexorable she was certain even her death could not have stopped it. She wondered how long the ordeal would last this time and if it would kill her. Such thoughts would undermine her endurance. Nature squeezed her in its fist. Life strained her sinews to the snapping point. Around her whirled the vortex of cruelty. She had to stop thinking. Thinking was the doorway to panic. To defeat.

  She could not allow defeat.

  She delivered herself to instinct and a strange exhilaration rose in her chest. The wild horse was running and she sat astride its back. To ride a wild horse, you had to open your heart to its spirit and let it merge with your own. If you fought it, you would be thrown.

  The throes faded and left her belly tauter than before. She felt her baby move inside his fast-shrinking chamber, but barely. A rustle of sensation, his last message from within her as all he had ever known rushed away from him, as his world turned upside down and prepared to cast him out into this one. He rode a wilder horse than she did. How brave he was. She was filled with a love so intense she feared it would burst the buckles of her heart. Her love reached out to Mattias and she felt his spirit touch her in reply. For a moment he was in her, as surely as was their child.

  He was with her, she knew it.

  He was near.

  She let out a single sob.

  The sob emptied her mind. For a moment she floated in silence. Then she heard the creak of axle and wheels, the grunts and oaths of the hauliers. She felt the heat of the rising sun and the weight of her belly. She relaxed her hold on the wooden board and sat back on her heels. She raised her head and looked into the face of Grymonde.

  In daylight his eyes were the loveliest shade of brown she had ever seen. Tawny as an owl’s, and they seemed to see as much. They did not belong in that grim and disproportioned visage at all, but were the eyes of a younger man and an older soul, as if his features had been moulded around them by a spiteful sculptor. They looked into hers without blinking. His immense brow was furrowed.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said.

  ‘I am not afraid.’

  ‘No. I see that now.’

  Grymonde walked along behind the cart, his chest almost touching the backboard, whose width
was only narrowly greater than his shoulders. He smiled.

  ‘You’ll be in my company for a while. At least until the babe is born and you’re feeling fit. So tell me, how should I call you? My lady? Madame? Your Grace? My manners are rough, but I don’t want you thinking I have none.’

  ‘You may call me Carla.’

  Her answer surprised them both. She didn’t question it.

  ‘A good choice. And a strong name. It does you justice.’

  ‘How does one address a king of thieves?’

  He laughed and the backboard trembled.

  ‘Grymonde will do. As for king, my army is as you see it, a fistful of ants crawling through a wilderness of tigers.’

  ‘I’d rather liken them to scorpions.’

  The cart jarred to a halt and tilted over as one wheel rolled into a pothole. Carla grabbed the sideboards. With no more than a shrug, Grymonde lifted the cart and shoved it on its way with such force that Papin and Bigot struggled not to fall underneath it.

  ‘Scorpions, I like that better,’ said Grymonde. ‘The scorpion is the symbol of death and these lads live with death. They sleep with him, they eat with him, they have carried him on their backs from the day they were born.’

  ‘So have we all.’

  ‘Indeed. Yet most hear him whisper in their ear but rarely, while for us he hardly ever holds his tongue. If any of these knaves were to dwell on it, none would wager a spoonful of honey on seeing three more summers, and they’d be right. But they do not so dwell. They live for this day, when the honey tastes good, and thus they know more of freedom than the highest in the land. If that be a kingdom, I’ll wear its crown.’

  Carla saw he needed her to be impressed. She was. More, she was moved.

  Yet she said, ‘A kingdom of raped women and murdered children?’

  His immense brow darkened. He blinked to hide the flames in his eyes. He looked away. Beyond her sight, she sensed the tightening of his fists.

  ‘You don’t know,’ he said. ‘You can’t know.’

  ‘I have known horror in the round,’ said Carla.

  Grymonde looked at her and doubted it. Then doubted his doubt.