Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  For an instant her belly touched his. Their faces were close. She smelled his strange smell. His ugliness towered over her. He released her and took a step back.

  ‘The mattress was thoughtful. You’ve been –’ She stopped, for the statement seemed absurd; yet it was true. ‘You’ve been very kind.’

  Grymonde grunted.

  ‘It’s nothing. Now, I can’t be seen bickering with a woman, so you’ll excuse me.’

  People had emerged from the houses and were swarming about the carts in great excitement. They were gaunt and begrimed, and tattered and tagged, and most stood shoeless in the filth, yet their vitality was immense. Carla felt it flow into her veins. The children, who were many, and the adults, too, stared at her as if at some exotic animal. The glances of the women were less than kind. Grymonde stood beside her and she felt safe. She stretched and though her thigh bones ached, her back pain eased. The crowd hummed with talk, yet none dared fall on the plunder as they wished to. She felt Antoinette take her hand and she squeezed it.

  Grymonde raised his arms.

  ‘All hail a mighty day for the people of Cockaigne.’

  He was rewarded with rowdy hurrahs. He grinned.

  ‘We have food and fiddles, and wassail and wine, and sugar and silks galore, and all of it to be taken today – for there may be no tomorrow.’

  ‘No tomorrow!’ shouted a woman.

  The cry was taken up.

  ‘No tomorrow!’

  Grymonde turned to look at Carla, as if to say, Now do you understand?

  She was strangely moved, in part by the joy of the people, in part that her feelings should matter to him. She nodded.

  ‘What’s the girl’s name?’

  ‘Antoinette.’

  Grymonde turned back to the gathered.

  ‘First make welcome these our new sisters. Carla, the lady from the south, though she needs nor pomp nor pride, so don’t be timid. And Antoinette, another orphan to be fostered by our plenty. As Jesus himself said, Suffer the little children to come unto me.’

  Carla wondered if this was a cruel jibe and looked at his face, but it was not. The man was quite able to marry viciousness and virtue with perfect inner harmony.

  Grymonde clasped his hands and became grave.

  ‘Some of our brothers will not be coming back. The teeth of the young lions were broken in the fight with a dreadful foe. We will wake their souls till morning; we will mourn them as we feast. Let laughter and full bellies bid them farewell. Thus, too, will we hallow our dead enemy, aye, for Solomon in all his glory ne’er faced so savage a beast. Let his name be spoken and heard, that he might become a legend among us. Carla?’

  He turned to Carla and for a moment she was taken aback to be given the stage.

  ‘Speak up. It’s your champion we seek to honour.’

  ‘Altan Savas.’

  Her throat tightened. It was true. Altan had died for her. She raised her voice.

  ‘His name was Altan Savas. Which means Red Dawn Rising.’

  ‘You see?’ Grymonde smiled at the crowd. ‘Who but Fate could have sent such a man to test our mettle? Altan Savas. Red Dawn Rising. And a right bloody dawn it was, too.’

  ‘’Twas Grymonde who slew him with his own hand!’ cried Bigot.

  ‘Knee-deep in blood they stood!’ added Papin.

  Grymonde tapped his own chest with an enormous finger.

  ‘This old cutthroat didn’t stand alone or he’d have torn my lungs out.’ He saluted his comrades. ‘Not only was this Altan Savas a warrior of uncanny prowess, but, as you will see, his very hide was carved with devils and writ with secret charms and magic spells.’

  Grymonde gestured to Bigot, who reached into the cart and brandished two broad strips of fresh meat. On one side the strips shone dull red with clotted blood and tissue. On the other they were inked with Arabic script and janissary tattoos. Mattias had such markings on his arms and thighs, as had Altan Savas.

  The crowd gasped and murmured and some made the Sign of the Cross.

  Carla turned away in revulsion. She looked at Grymonde.

  He avoided her eyes in favour of his audience.

  ‘But the telling of heroic tales can wait until our table is laid. We’ve a pig on the way to enhance these excellent viands, so save your appetites. Till then, we’ve much to do. So have at the plunder and clear the carts for we’ll need them. But not this one.’

  Grymonde pointed to Carla’s baggage.

  Carla, still disgusted, shook her head.

  ‘No. Let them have it. The only thing I value is my gambo violl.’

  ‘Well said, well said,’ murmured Grymonde. His eyes were alive with the passion of his harangue, and again she questioned his sanity. ‘Which is this gambo violl?’

  ‘The largest of the cases.’

  He plucked the case from the bunch and waved it aloft.

  ‘Carla says make free with her riches. She, too, believes there is no mine or thine.’

  ‘Can I keep my recorder?’ asked Antoinette.

  ‘Take it,’ said Grymonde, ‘before some other lays claim. But if they do, do not cry.’

  The thieves’ triumph seemed all but over and Carla would soon meet her midwife. She didn’t want to do so both bedraggled and empty-handed. She needed a token of respect.

  ‘Grymonde, let me see inside that valise.’

  Grymonde stuck his arm among those already ransacking the baggage, swatting several aside. Carla turned and bent to lean against the cart as the next contraction began.

  She felt a fresh trickle of fluid between her thighs. Her throes went unremarked as the people of the yard fell upon the spoil. The surge of pain, the relentless and ungovernable flexing of her own strength, encompassed her being. The pain unlocked something inside her and she was flooded with a love which was hardly less crippling. She gave her love to her baby and hoped the pain was hers alone. At length the spasm passed but left her drained, breathless, close to a faint. She took a moment to collect herself. She was shocked. So early in the labour and already her energies were taxed. She had believed herself well prepared. She had done this twice before. But her body told her this time would be harder. She was older. She was weaker. All the more reason to concentrate on the birth and nothing else.

  She straightened.

  ‘Hugon,’ said Grymonde, ‘carry these for Carla.’

  A gaunt, delicate lad who had not been on the raid ran over to her. He was naked to the waist, like many of the boys, and his skin was the colour of mother-of-pearl, his muscles vivid. He had two knife scars on his chest. Delicate was the wrong word. Perhaps she had landed on it because she found him beautiful.

  Hugon bowed to her, his eyes on hers, and she acknowledged the courtesy. He took the violl and valise from Grymonde, and looked at her again, without any expression she could name. Yet while the other denizens were merely curious, from Hugon she felt something like a plea, as if he were stranded and hoped that somehow, against all reason, she could help him.

  Grymonde offered her his arm.

  ‘Come, I invite you to my home. There’s no sounder haven in all the Ville.’

  Carla laid one hand on Grymonde’s forearm, but put no weight on it. Her strength rebounded. She had given up trying to walk with any semblance of grace some weeks before, but as they walked to the crazed house she held her chin high.

  Hugon followed them.

  The door was open. To her surprise she caught a breath of sweet scents from within. They reminded her of the great ward of the Hospital in Malta. Thyrus wood or something similar. Grymonde climbed the doorstep, then remembered his manners and turned, and stepped back down, and invited her with a sweep of his arm.

  Carla stopped and looked for Antoinette.

  The girl was engaged in a struggle for her recorder with a boy near twice her size.

  ‘Antoinette, let him keep it,’ called Carla.

  Antoinette aimed a kick at the boy and missed and let go of the recorder. She shouted someth
ing at the boy and ran to Carla, on the verge of tears of fury. At the sight of Grymonde she clenched her lips. Carla squeezed her shoulder.

  ‘I will get you another. What did you say to him?’

  ‘I told him I would get it back later.’

  ‘You were very brave.’

  ‘Maman told us we must always be ready to face God.’

  ‘She was right, we must, but not for the sake of a recorder.’

  ‘Let her stay out here with them,’ said Grymonde. ‘She’ll not come to any great harm, and she can always knock on this door.’

  Carla rearranged the cap on Antoinette’s head.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  Antoinette looked back at the festive gaiety investing the carts.

  ‘If I may, I’ll stay out here for a while.’

  ‘Very well. Remember, you can come to me any time you want.’

  As Antoinette headed back to reclaim her instrument, Carla glimpsed a skinny, wild-haired figure, half-concealed at the mouth of the alley that gave onto the yard.

  It was Estelle, the Rat Girl who had fallen down the chimney.

  The girl was naked. Her solitude was pitiful. Carla was certain Estelle was staring at her, and for the first time since arriving in Cockaigne she felt afraid.

  ‘Look, I believe that’s Estelle.’

  Grymonde turned. ‘I knew she’d come.’

  Of all the horrors of the morning, none had affected Carla more keenly than Estelle’s humiliation and banishment. She didn’t know why; only that it was so.

  She said, ‘You used her cruelly.’

  ‘Heat of the moment. I had to set examples. As I recall, I was provoked to do so.’

  Carla was too annoyed by the smirk on his face to contest this detail.

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t want her to see –’ he shrugged ‘– the things we had to do.’

  ‘I am amazed to hear you own to such scruples.’

  Carla turned back to the yard. Estelle had gone.

  ‘Call her back,’ said Carla.

  ‘She shouldn’t have been with us anyway. Joco brought her.’

  ‘Send someone after her.’

  ‘She’ll be back when she smells roasting pork. She knows I love her.’

  ‘I don’t think she does.’

  ‘She’s a dangerous little vixen when she wants to be. And she bears you no affection. I saw the way she looked at you.’

  ‘I do not ask for my own benefit. The girl has thrown her lot in with rats, in preference to humans. That’s how little she knows of your supposed love.’

  Grymonde bristled but on this point could not contradict her.

  ‘There’s no one here could catch La Rossa, unless she wants to be caught.’

  Carla’s instincts were insistent.

  ‘In her heart that’s exactly what she wants.’

  ‘Papin!’

  Carla recoiled from the bellow. Papin almost fell from the cart.

  ‘La Rossa lurks in the alley. Send someone to fetch her.’

  ‘Estelle?’ said Papin. ‘What for?’

  ‘Tell her we forgive her! Tell her we love her!’

  ‘We do?’

  ‘Send someone she doesn’t want to stab, if such can be found.’

  Grymonde turned back to Carla and bowed, not without mockery.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘It is my pleasure to serve.’

  A woman’s voice rasped forth from inside the house.

  ‘Get on in here and give us a kiss, you dirty devil.’

  Carla looked through the door but saw only piles of rummage in the gloom.

  A wild cheer erupted, prompted by the discovery of a barrel of wine.

  ‘Hellfire, what’ve you been up to? Aside from evil?’

  The voice from within was common, unvarnished and loud.

  ‘Wouldn’t you just like to know, Mam,’ returned Grymonde in kind.

  ‘If this old girl has to come out there she’ll make you plant that kiss on her arse.’

  Grymonde beamed with pride.

  ‘And who’s that you’ve got with you? Has she no better manners?’

  Carla took a breath, smoothed her stained gown, and steeled herself.

  ‘And now, with your permission,’ said Grymonde, ‘I will present my mother.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On the Vertex

  THE NEAREST CHURCH was ancient and much neglected. Tannhauser had passed it on the way from the Place de Grève. Behind it he could see the spire of the priory of Sainte-Croix, but he was not in the mood to talk his way to the top of a ladder of monks.

  The church was small and of plain rectangular design, without a transept or chapels. It was empty but for two old women praying. Two decrepit wooden rails either side of the nave separated the narthex from the pews. On the left of the narthex was a stone baptismal font, the sight of which sickened him. There was only one other exit, a door in the wall of the southern aisle just short of the raised chancel, where burned a red sanctuary lamp strung from a chain. He found the door ajar. He followed a corridor past a locked sacristy and through a second door, also ajar, into a small adjoining house. In the front room he found a priest bibbing wine for breakfast.

  The priest wore nose-glasses. On the table before him were sheets of paper, quill and ink. He looked to be around forty, with nothing to cover the dome of his head but memories. His face suggested a bilious disposition. He was tall and thin, as if, apart from wine, life offered little to please him. He did not notice Tannhauser enter.

  ‘Mattias Tannhauser, Chevalier Magistral of the Order of Saint John the Baptist.’

  The priest’s reaction was of such blind fear that he spilled most of the wine down the front of his cassock. He jumped to his feet and clapped one hand to his chest.

  ‘Forgive this intrusion, but if you are the curé I must ask of you a sacred and urgent service.’

  On the wall behind the priest was a portrait of a man in the red hat and robes of a cardinal, who sat on a gilded chair with an altar boy standing at his side. Despite the artist’s efforts to flatter his subject, the cardinal’s features evoked those of an ageing madam in a waterfront brothel. Though not explicit, the staging of the piece suggested that the cardinal was fondling the boy’s arse, and the boy’s expression lent credence to this interpretation. When he looked back down at the priest, Tannhauser noted a distinct resemblance to both cardinal and boy, as if the one had matured into the other.

  The priest removed his nose-glasses and took in the fresh bloodstains on the Maltese Cross. He concluded that, despite general appearances, this brute was unlikely to kill him, mopped the wine from his chin and gave a short bow.

  ‘Good morning, chevalier. Father Philippe La Fosse.’

  Tannhauser stared at the priest for a while. His mind was blank.

  ‘How can I help you?’ asked La Fosse. ‘Chevalier?’

  ‘My wife has been murdered.’

  ‘Your wife? I am horrified –’

  ‘She lies not far from this church, indeed it’s possible she attended Mass on recent occasions. She may even have discussed a baptism. She was in late pregnancy.’

  The priest’s brow furrowed with the bland compassion required by his vocation.

  ‘I recollect no such woman, I’m afraid. And this is not the parish church, so I doubt she would have come here. Sainte-Cécile is a chapel attached to the priory of Sainte-Croix, though it is open to the public on Sundays and Solemnities.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I’d be grateful if you’d rouse some servants to fetch her body here, at once. A woman with a strong stomach to wash her. I want a good stout coffin lined with lead. I’ll be taking her home and it’s far. A decent shroud, the appropriate sacraments, a requiem, so forth. To rest in a church would comfort her soul and keep her from further desecration. The rats. It would also comfort me.’

  La Fosse fluttered his fingers. His sympathy was genuine enough, but not so deep as to encompass unforeseen labours.
He produced a kindly but regretful smile.

  ‘This is rather a shabby old place, and Paris hardly lacks for splendid churches –’

  ‘Christ was not impressed by splendour. Neither was Carla.’

  ‘As for a lead-lined coffin –’

  ‘This is a fat parish in a fat city. There are dozens of such coffins to be had. The rich fancy it improves their chances of Paradise. I just want to avoid the smell of her rotting.’ He dropped half an ounce of Spanish gold on the table. ‘For that I could buy a coffin lined with silver.’ He added a second double pistole. ‘For the poor box.’

  The difficulties vanished as quickly as the gold.

  ‘I will see to it personally. For a modest donation the priory provides a most beautiful six-voice requiem. Exquisite boys. They would break the stoniest heart.’

  Tannhauser’s heart was broken enough.

  ‘An honest man mourns without witnesses.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Tannhauser thought of Carla’s love for music.

  ‘No. A chant may suit after all. I’ll reconsider these details when I return.’

  ‘Where will my servants find your good wife?’

  ‘In a bedchamber on the first floor of the Hôtel D’Aubray.’

  La Fosse turned a shade redder. He leaned one hand on the table.

  ‘Your wife was the guest of Madame D’Aubray?’

  La Fosse was shocked into frantic cogitation. Tannhauser could read none of it. Priests hid their thoughts as a matter of habit. La Fosse reclaimed his bland composure.

  ‘May I ask why your wife was there?’

  ‘She was invited to the royal wedding, by the Queen Mother. She was lodging with Madame D’Aubray, who was also invited.’

  ‘This is tragic. Tragic. Please, accept my heartfelt condolence.’

  ‘Carla is covered with canvas, in a bedchamber on the first floor. Your servants will find other bodies but they’re not my concern. Nor yours, unless charity so moves you.’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘Madame D’Aubray is hanging from a window. Her children and a manservant are inside. Carla’s bodyguard, too, but I’ll deal with his remains.’

  With these further details, La Fosse put a hand to his brow.