by Tim Willocks
‘Are you listening, Father?’
‘Yes, forgive me. I knew Symonne D’Aubray. This is appalling. A perfect gentlewoman. Her children, too? God’s mercy. When did this happen?’
‘I’d say two hours ago, while I was detained by events at the Louvre.’
‘The Louvre?’ He reappraised Tannhauser’s eminence. ‘The Protestant conspiracy? The attempt to assassinate the King?’
‘There was no such conspiracy nor any such attempt.’
‘But they’ve tried more than once before –’
‘Tonight we conspired against them.’
The priest’s eyes revisited the blackening stains on Tannhauser’s chest. He essayed an unctuous smile then abandoned it for fake woe.
‘What a terrible loss you have suffered in the service of God and the Crown –’
Tannhauser clenched his teeth. He wanted to stab the priest.
‘I serve neither God nor the Crown. I serve no one.’
‘I see.’ La Fosse stared down at his thumbs.
‘I do not even serve any purpose.’
Tannhauser put one hand over his face and squeezed his temples.
His chest felt tight. He could hardly remember why he had come here, why he was talking to this black-frocked lickspittle. Rage filled him. The rage was a skin stretched thin over other, more painful, sentiments he was less well equipped to contain. His mind was at war. Yet even war had the illusion of structure and intent, of outcomes to be feared or desired. His mind had none. He did not know where his next step should take him, still less where it would. Thoughts crowded at the borders of the emptiness inside him, held at bay because any one of them might unman him.
‘Is the babe doomed to Limbo?’ Tannhauser blurted the question without the awareness of having conceived it. ‘Our child had a soul. Surely the journey from the womb to the world does not in itself create the soul. Such a journey is long and dangerous. Only a soul would have the courage to attempt it.’
He dropped his hand. He clenched his fists by his thighs. He looked at La Fosse.
‘I know the Church has little mercy on babes who die without baptism. I baptised our first child, for that reason. But if our new babe was killed before it was born, it must be innocent of the crime of being born, which – and here I will agree with Mother Church – is the greatest crime of all. And if our child was thus unstained by Original Sin, wherefore should she, or he, go to Hell?’
He felt the urge to take La Fosse by the throat and squeeze him blue.
‘Would you send such a soul to Hell?’
‘No, no. Never. Of course not. Please, chevalier, don’t hurt me.’
‘To bring Carla back – even to have arrived in time to die in her defence – I would sacrifice every human being in Paris. She would damn me for the deed, perhaps for the thought. Yet I would take the axe and drag them to the block one by one, just to see her smile again.’
La Fosse cowered from his bloodstained ravings.
Tannhauser reined himself in.
‘Forgive me, Father. Thank you for taking charge of her remains. Adieu.’
He turned away. He felt obliged to give a reason.
‘I’ll be back later. I have to recover my guns.’
‘Brother Mattias, wait.’
Tannhauser felt La Fosse’s hand on his arm. He looked at him. His near departure had reassured the priest. He was no longer terrified.
‘Make your confession and I will hear it, for it will lighten the load you are carrying. Then you may take Holy Communion. Let the Body of Christ salve your wounds.’
‘Father, since I entered this city not a day ago I have killed six men who, in truth, I need not have killed at all. I advised the King’s first counsellor, with powerful and subtle logic, to slaughter the Huguenot elite. Their blood is on my hands. I neglected my wife and our unborn babe and both lie butchered and defiled. And there are murders yet to be accomplished, whose victims are yet unknown to me, which await my labours. These sins and more I claim and confess, some with shame, some with bitter remorse. But while I would accept your blessing, I cannot accept absolution, because most of my sins I repent not in the least particular.’
‘Do you think all sins absolved by the Church are sincerely repented?’
‘Those sins are not on my conscience.’
‘Such rare scruples do you credit.’
‘Carla loved her Faith. She honoured its sacraments. In memory of her, so will I. I won’t mock them in search of a comfort I do not deserve and will not find and do not need.’
‘Then I will give you my blessing, but first, stay awhile. Take some wine.’
‘I will take some information. The D’Aubray house was sacked by ruffians so low they stole a sack of flour as if it were saffron. They headed due west. I am a stranger here. From what district might such villains hail?’
‘Brother Mattias, I beg you, spare yourself any thought of seeking justice for this horrible crime, for you’ll never find it. Let God punish them, for His vengeance will be terrible. Mourn your wife. Take consolation in the works of Our Lord.’
‘You must have some notion.’
‘There are a dozen notorious enclaves of absolute lawlessness scattered all over the city, each a tangled knot of blind alleys and secret courtyards known only to its denizens and jealously guarded by the same. These wretches live like – well, one cannot even compare them to animals, for what vermin would peddle a boy’s virtue for a flagon of parsnip wine? – and in conditions of unspeakable degradation, godlessness and violence.’
Tannhauser walked to the table and poured wine from a jug. He drank.
‘As to the culprits you seek? No one would betray them to you. Even if you had the villain’s very name, as well might you plunge your hand into an anthill to find the ant that had stung you.’
‘Which of these hellholes are best placed for commerce with the court?’
‘You can’t mean the Louvre?’
‘We know who pays for the parsnip wine.’
‘Whatever I know is gleaned from gossip and can’t be trusted.’
‘Gossip will do.’
La Fosse struggled, as if making a decision he felt was unwise.
‘North of Les Halles – the market quarter – lies the worst such den in the city. The Yards, so called. It occupies the hill just south-west of Porte Saint-Denis, and more or less due west from the Hôtel D’Aubray.’
‘The Yards.’
It sounded as good a place as any to shake hands with the Devil.
‘No one from outside sets foot in the Yards, least of all the police. The children are as dangerous as the bite of a rabid dog. The women are worse. Two gentle Franciscans went into the Yards with nothing but love in their hearts, to spread the Word of Christ, to bring light into their darkness. They were never seen again. Within a day their robes and rosaries were on sale in the Place de Grève. Some say their meat was sold as pork in Les Halles. Can you imagine the implications for the resurrection of their bodies at the Last Judgement?’
La Fosse kissed the crucifix around his neck.
‘These place names mean nothing to me.’ Tannhauser indicated the scribe’s tools on the table. ‘Draw me up a map.’
La Fosse donned his glasses and chose a stripped quill from a jar. He dipped it and took a sheet of paper. He drew two well-spaced lines across the width of the page.
‘Let this represent the River Seine. And in the river, the City.’ He drew the island and marked a cross at either end. ‘Notre-Dame. Sainte-Chapelle.’ He dipped ink and drew bridges joining La Cité to the right bank. ‘From La Cité to La Ville, we have Pont Notre-Dame, Pont au Change, and the Millers’ Bridge, with the waterwheels.’ To the south he drew two more bridges. ‘And from La Cité to the Latin Quarter, we have the Petit Pont and the Pont Saint-Michel.’
‘Marvellous. Go on, Father.’
‘To the north of the river, the city walls of Charles the Fifth make a shape that we might compare to the shell of a duck egg
.’ La Fosse drew a semi-ovoid spanning the whole north bank of the Seine. He dipped his quill. ‘But the older walls to the south enclose a space more proportionate to a quail’s egg. Or perhaps a hen’s.’
As the vast city acquired a shape in his mind, Tannhauser felt less at its mercy.
‘Good.’ Remembering that every artist craved undiluted praise, he added, ‘Superb.’
La Fosse warmed to his performance. He exchanged the quill for a finer one.
‘Here are the six gates of the north, which I will mark thus by letters. Porte Sainte-Honoré. Montmartre. Saint-Denis. Saint-Martin. The Temple. Saint-Antoine, which I will mark B, for the Bastille, which guards it. Now, here, we find Les Halles, west of the great tower of Saint-Jacques, which the butchers paid for. And they talk of the wealth of the Church. Here is the most feared building in France, the fortress of the Châtelet, where the police are quartered. If it’s justice you seek, my brother, go elsewhere. And here is the Cemetery of the Innocents.’ As if starved for acclaim he said, ‘I hope this crude sketch is helpful.’
‘It’s a masterpiece of cartography.’
‘As for the other churches of the Ville, where do I begin –?’
Tannhauser aimed a forefinger at the western edge of the map. ‘The Louvre?’ Then again, to the east of the Pont Notre-Dame. ‘The Place de Grève and the Hôtel de Ville?’
‘Correct. Very good. We are here, approximately.’ He marked the map.
‘And the Left Bank?’
‘Personally, I avoid it. The students fill one with despair. Here is the Tour de Nesle. And the six gates.’ He sketched. ‘The gallows in Place Maubert. Ah, the abbeys. Outside the wall we have Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and within we have, my word, Cluny, Sainte-Geneviève, the Augustinians, the Bernardines –’
‘Excuse me, Father.’ Tannhauser tugged the map away before it became congested. ‘I’m in your debt.’ He blew on the ink. ‘Tell me more about Symonne D’Aubray.’
La Fosse repressed his discomfort so expertly that Tannhauser wasn’t sure he’d seen it. La Fosse indicated the papers scattered on his desk.
‘The D’Aubrays are Protestants. Her late husband was a radical but Symonne devoted herself to her family and her business.’ He shrugged. ‘She’s on the list.’
‘A list of Protestants.’
‘An ensign sent by the Bureau de Ville dragged me from my bed to make sure it was complete. Their list is drawn from tax rolls and therefore wholly deficient. I know every household in the parish, even those who aren’t Catholic. The Bureau is in a state of panic. Is it true a Huguenot army is at the gates?’
‘No. Coligny and all his captains are dead.’
‘Praise God.’
‘Why does the Bureau need such a list?’ asked Tannhauser.
‘The city is ruled by the legal and financial grandees, ‘Les Messieurs’, who have been infiltrated by the Protestants. Marriage, kinship, conversion. Heresy is no longer even a crime. Money matters more than love of God –’
‘Why does the Bureau need the list?’
‘I’m told it’s for their own protection.’
‘The Huguenots?’
‘Parisians are weary. Famine, high prices, plague. Taxes to pay for wars declared but not won. Taxes to bribe the mercenaries hired by the Huguenots to leave. Taxes to pay our own foreign hirelings. Taxes to raise grand buildings we can’t afford to finish. Taxes to pay for this abomination of a wedding. Who believes in the match? Not the bride and groom. And now they want us to fight the Spanish? Parisians want these problems to go away, which means they want the Huguenots to go away, that’s all. But some factions – the militant confraternities – are not weary at all. Hatred of the Huguenots is the principal enthusiasm of their lives.’
‘Who will provide this protection?’
La Fosse said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘Who polices the city? Who’s in charge of order?’
‘A dozen magistrates would give you a dozen different answers and none would swear an oath on his opinion.’
‘Nor need you. Explain.’
‘The King and the Bureau share, and compete for, the power to govern the city. The sergents à verge are some two hundred constables and bailiffs commanded from the Châtelet by two Lieutenants – Civil and Criminel – and their superintendents and inspectors – the commissaires and examinateurs. They investigate primarily by means of the rack, and spend most of their energies collecting the fines and fees that pay their wages. However, and I assure you I am not inventing this, they take no responsibility for the prevention of crime in the streets. That is the province of the Lieutenant of the Robe, who patrols the city by day with twenty archers.’
‘A villain’s paradise.’
‘Well put, chevalier. Paris also has a military governor entrusted with the defence of the city walls. The Royal Watch is another company, of thirty men, which patrols by night, or when they can be dragged from the taverns. All these offices – civil, criminal and military – along with others whose names and functions escape me, overlap with each other at every point in authority, responsibility and jurisdiction.’
‘So there’s always someone else to blame.’
La Fosse frowned as if this had never occurred to him. ‘Of course. Of course.’
‘Who are the clowns roaming the streets with banner and drum?’
‘The civic militia, or bourgeois guet. Each company of a hundred men is drawn from one of the city’s sixteen quartiers. During the last war their captains proclaimed themselves Soldiers of Christ. They were, shall we say, very active during the Gastines riots, in which Roger D’Aubray died. The King alone can call them up. Beyond that, and legally speaking, no one is sure who controls them, or who defines the limits of their duties, or even what those duties might be. In practice, they are under the sway of the confraternities – groups of devout and, shall we say, militant Catholics.’
Tannhauser recalled the confraternities in Sicily. Foot soldiers of the Inquisition.
‘So the militia is run by fanatics.’
La Fosse hesitated, uncertain of Tannhauser’s leanings.
Tannhauser said, ‘I was called a fanatic myself only yesterday.’
‘I will put it this way. The people at large have no great affection for the city fathers, but when the civic militia hold a parade they come out in droves to cheer.’
Tannhauser took the nose-glasses from the table. Two convex lenses in silver frames connected by a C-shaped bridge. His own eyes were not what they used to be.
‘May I?’
He put them on. The fit was too snug. He noticed the priest wince as he bent the C-bridge wider. Vanity had prevented him testing such glasses before. He was startled by their power. Various blurred details on the map sprang into focus. The ink was dry. He folded the map in four, wrapped the glasses in the map, and slipped both into his pocket. He wondered if he should leave Juste and Grégoire here, for safety. Some instinct rebelled against it. He glanced at the portrait of the cardinal. He scooped up the sheets of paper covered with names and rolled them and shoved them into his boot top.
He walked to the door.
‘I’ll be back to make further arrangements and approve the coffin.’
‘Brother Mattias, you haven’t received my blessing.’
‘Just make sure the coffin will please me.’
‘And my nose-glasses?’
The two boys had fashioned a collar of gold braid for the half-bald dog and were pleased with themselves. The dog trotted between Clementine’s forehooves like a little jinn, an arrangement with which both animals seemed content. When the sentinel jumped to lower the chain he gawped at the dog as if its bizarre appearance among the entourage were further evidence that Tannhauser was of unsound mind. In the gallows square beyond the chain, the number of armed men had swollen. More limp flags were brandished in the humid morning air. A bagpiper played a jaunty air.
‘Greetings, good sire! Do you know there is a cur hiding under your horse?
’
Tannhauser flipped a sou at him. The sentinel snatched at the coin and knocked it into the street. He set to scouring the ground with his head below his knees, his concentration compromised by frequent glances at the dog.
‘That cur has something of the devil, sire. It’s giving me the evil eye.’
Grégoire spotted the coin and picked it up. He handed it to Hervé, who began to smile but grimaced when he saw Grégoire’s lip. He took the coin without thanking him and backed away. Grégoire was unmoved.
‘What was this oaf’s name?’ Tannhauser asked Juste.
‘Hervé the plasterer,’ whispered Juste.
‘Hervé,’ said Tannhauser, ‘Father La Fosse tells me the militia are in charge of maintaining the peace and tranquillity of the city.’
‘Thus charged we are, sire. Peace and tranquillity will be maintained at all costs. Rebels will be punished with the harshest legalities.’
‘He says the Bureau has ordered you to protect all Huguenot civilians.’
Hervé polished his coin. ‘The militia takes its orders from the King.’
‘I saw His Majesty not three hours ago, at the Louvre, during the harsh legalities we inflicted on the rebels with the edges of our swords.’
‘God bless His Majesty for finally seeing the light! And God bless you too, sire.’
‘Is the priest misinformed?’
‘Their eminences in the Bureau de Ville like to think they run everything in Paris, by which they mean stuffing their pockets with gold. Whose gold? Why, Huguenot gold. Huguenot bribes. Huguenot taxes and tolls. That’s why the Bureau protects them. Of course it’s really our gold, squeezed, swindled and stolen from honest artisans such as myself, for when it comes to extorting money the Huguenots are second only to the Jews. But to answer your question, sire – and this is a strict legality – only the King himself can call up the militia, in matters of dire circumstance to the public good, ipso facto, whereby we assume with all due courage and honour, and while risking our lives, though seeing not a sol in payment, our civic duty.’
Hervé took a breath and jerked a thumb at the mob in the Place de Grève.
‘And as you can see, the King has indeed called us up, has he not? We trust him and he trusts us. In respect of which sacred duties thereunto – and in so far as we are told – His Majesty’s wishes could not be any plainer.’
