by Tim Willocks
He had let Carla die. In his mind’s eye he saw her face.
Tannhauser kicked on the door.
‘Jean. Ebert. Put your britches on and come out. The captain wants us.’
Silence fell. Then low, frenzied murmurs. Students, not militia. A debate. They sounded guilty, anxious. No sound from Pascale or Flore. But then silence was the usual response to violence and rape. A reedy male voice piped up.
‘We can’t come out right now. Our regrets.’
‘Tell the captain we will join him later.’
‘Regrets?’ Tannhauser kicked again. ‘You’ll regret a good flogging.’
He heard a key turn in the lock.
‘Listen here, sirrah,’ a voice began, with a stab at lordly authority. ‘We’re not members of your militia and we’re entitled to do as we please. Is that clear?’
At that, as if to dramatise the point, the fellow popped the door open.
Tannhauser was about to stab him when he recognised one of the two actors he had thrashed in the Red Ox the day before. The actor recognised him, too.
He almost screamed: ‘No. No. We saved them. We saved them both.’
Tannhauser pulled the upstroke that was meant to gut him, and smashed the pommel of the dagger through the bridge of his nose. The bones gave way and rivulets of blood snorted forth. Tannhauser kicked the actor’s legs from under him and shoved. The actor hit the floor as Tannhauser entered, the thumb of his dagger hand on the bowstring. He drew and aimed at the second actor, who rose from a chair by the window. He noted that both men had been gouged in the face by fingernails.
‘Sit down or I will kill you. Put both hands under your arse.’
The youth obeyed, his eyes flitting back and forth from the gleaming leather apron to the wet red bodkin aimed at his chest.
‘Are you Jean?’
‘Yes and it’s true,’ said Jean, ‘we saved them both –’
‘Don’t speak. Stare at your balls.’
Jean obeyed.
Tannhauser looked at Pascale and Flore.
They were alive. They were fully dressed. They appeared unharmed. To his shame he felt tears cloud his vision. He lowered the bow and sheathed his dagger. The room contained a double bed, two chairs, a table by the window; sundry jumble and clutter. Pascale and Flore sat on the farther side of the bed. Ebert lay face-down, snivelling blood. Tannhauser stomped on his left ribs.
‘Ebert, crawl under the bed.’
Ebert moaned and snaked across the floor until his head and shoulders were crammed under the bed. He started crying. Ebert had a knife at his waist. Tannhauser took it. It was trash. He threw it out of the door. He stomped on Ebert’s right ribs and felt the cartilages crackle under his heel where they joined the spine. He turned to Jean and took a long butcher’s knife from Jean’s belt. It was new and appeared unused. He held the edge under Jean’s chin while he peered through the window into the street.
‘Got yourself a butcher’s knife, did you, Jean? Fancy yourself a butcher?’
The windowpanes were thick and blurred at their centres, but he could see enough. A mob of around a dozen militiamen were holding a conference upwind of the bonfire. There was a good deal of arm-waving and red-faced recrimination.
Tannhauser turned and looked at Pascale. She wore a red silk scarf around her throat. She looked back at him. For an instant it felt as if the whole world were frozen by her immense and unreckonable woundedness. But he knew that it was an illusion and that the world was moving still, and moving against them.
‘Where are my pistols?’
Each girl held a thin pillow across her lap. Neither of them moved. Tannhauser thought about the long and scalp-crawling terror they must have endured.
‘Forgive me if I’m curt.’ He hadn’t shifted the knife at Jean’s throat. ‘You must be sore distressed, but only the practicalities are material. The pistols?’
From her lap Pascale produced the first of the wheel-lock pistols, holding it in both hands like a short musket. The dog was down on the pan cover.
Flore revealed the second.
‘Are they primed and cocked?’ he asked.
Pascale took a deep breath, as if it were the first she’d taken in a while.
‘If they were not, there’d be no sense in having them.’
‘Perhaps I asked a stupid question.’
‘It was a good question,’ said Flore. ‘Papa showed us how to prime them this morning. They’re loaded, primed and cocked.’
‘May I take charge of the pistols?’
‘Not this one,’ said Pascale.
‘I understand,’ began Tannhauser.
‘No you don’t,’ said Pascale.
‘I intend to travel over the rooftops,’ he said. ‘We can’t so travel with cocked guns. If you’d seen as many men shot by accident as I have, you’d take no offence.’
‘I take no offence,’ said Pascale. ‘And I will not shoot by accident.’
She stood up and pointed the muzzle of the gun at Jean’s chest.
Tannhauser stepped well clear of the bore.
‘Pascale, don’t fire. Let me explain.’
Pascale paused but held her aim. Jean began to shake.
‘We came here to save you, Pascale,’ said Jean. ‘We did save you.’
Before Jean could talk her into shooting him, Tannhauser smashed out his front teeth with the butt end of the butcher’s knife. Jean fell to the floor. He looked up at Tannhauser. His eyes were glassy.
‘I told you not to speak.’
Tannhauser looked at Pascale. Pascale looked at him.
‘Pascale, we are in a dire pickle. We have a long way to go before we’ll be clear of it.’
‘You think we can get clear?’ said Flore.
‘I didn’t come here to die. As you’ve discovered, those pistols come in handy, especially if those clowns in the street don’t know we have them.’
Pascale’s eyes were dark tunnels drilled for the conveyance of pain.’
‘Are you telling me not to kill him?’
‘I’m asking you not to shoot him. We’d be deaf for the rest of the day. If you want to kill him, cold steel is more reliable. But killing is a bridge you cross in only one direction. There’s no way back from the other side, not just in this life, but through all eternity. My advice is to keep your soul clean of murder. More likely than not, you’d regret it.’
‘I do not consider it murder. I do not believe I will regret it.’
‘Listen to him, Pascale,’ said Flore. ‘I believe Papa would say the same.’
‘Father is dead.’
Pascale did not break her gaze away from Tannhauser’s.
‘He is dead, isn’t he? That is what we’ve been breathing all morning. The smell of Father burning?’
‘Yes. He’s dead. They burned him on a pile of the books he had made.’
He heard Flore choke down a cry. Pascale didn’t blink.
‘But I said “more likely than not”. I did not say for certain. I do not know you. Perhaps it is your destiny, to be a killer, whether you regret it or not. Or I should say: perhaps to be a killer is the destiny you will choose, for a destiny must always be chosen, despite that it lies in wait for you to find it.’
‘Do you regret choosing yours?’
‘I crossed that bridge so long ago I can’t remember what lies on the other side.’
‘I waited for you,’ said Pascale.
Tannhauser was taken aback.
‘For me?’
‘For you. You told us you would come.’
Tannhauser didn’t reply.
Pascale’s lips trembled. She clenched them.
‘I waited for you all night. I told Father you would come. I told Flore you would come. And you didn’t come.’
‘Pascale, don’t say this,’ said Flore. ‘He did come, he’s here now.’
‘Then I waited for you all morning. And then they took Father. And they burned him on a pile of the books he had made.’
Pascale’s eyes filmed with tears. Yet she did not let them fall.
Tannhauser felt his own vision blur again.
‘He was the best man in this world,’ said Pascale. ‘He could sing and he could dance. He could speak and write in the ancient tongues. Inside his mind the universe turned ten thousand times a day, so he told me. And I believed him.’
‘I believe him, too,’ said Tannhauser.
‘He was a better man than you.’
‘I do not doubt it. He raised you and Flore.’
Without breaking her gaze, Pascale raised a hand and wiped one eye at a time.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘This is a dark and bloody day.’
‘It’s a darker and bloodier day than you can know. But I am a dark and bloody man. Let me deal with the practicalities.’
‘I want to deal with the practicalities, too.’
‘There are six men downstairs whose souls already squirm in Hell, and who did their share of squirming as they died. As for these two, if they stand not high in your esteem – the contrary possibility being the only reason I spared them this long – I’d rather they didn’t live to spread my name.’
‘We don’t know your name,’ cried Ebert from beneath the bed.
‘His name is Tannhauser,’ said Pascale. ‘Why don’t you show him your cock like you showed us? Go on. Get it out again.’
Tannhauser looked at Ebert.
Ebert broke wind. ‘We didn’t mean any disrespect.’
‘We came to help you, Pascale,’ said Jean. He rose to his knees, gibbering through the fresh gaps in his teeth. ‘And we did help, didn’t we? We kept the others away from this door, didn’t we? We protected you. We don’t hate Huguenots. By my word, I admire them. We aren’t like the others, we’re not militia.’
‘You brought them here,’ said Pascale. ‘You knew where we lived.’
‘They knew your father,’ said Ebert. ‘They would have come anyway.’
‘They wouldn’t have come so early,’ said Pascale. ‘They wouldn’t have come until later, until tonight, or even tomorrow. They wouldn’t have come two hours ago. They wouldn’t have come before Tannhauser arrived.’
‘We didn’t know Tannhauser was going to arrive,’ blurted Ebert. ‘Though of course we thank God that he did.’
‘We came to take you home with us,’ said Jean. ‘And if you let us, we will.’
‘You mean that dirty garret? Or to meet Mater and Pater in the grand chateau?’
‘Pascale,’ moaned Jean. ‘Can’t you see I adore you? I’m in love with you.’
Pascale hawked and spat on him.
‘You’re not going home,’ she said. ‘I’m going to murder you.’
‘His Excellency is right,’ said Jean. ‘You’re not old enough to kill me.’
‘I’m old enough for you to squeeze my tits.’
Tannhauser should have killed both the students as soon as he’d come through the door. As he listened, he was confused as to the rights and the wrongs. He had taken great pains to steer Orlandu clear of killing. He hoped to do the same for Grégoire and Juste. But boys he understood. Of the hearts of girls he knew nothing. He was inclined to give Pascale what she wanted, but she wasn’t much more than a child. He didn’t want to help her damn her soul. On the other hand, her soul was her own.
And at her age he had reached the same decision.
‘Is it true you brought the militia to this house?’ he asked Jean.
‘Yes, yes,’ said Jean. ‘Because we knew we could protect the girls.’
‘How did you know?’ said Flore.
Jean opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.
‘You could have come alone and warned us,’ went on Flore. ‘You didn’t need to bring the militia. But then Papa would have told you to go away and leave us alone. The militia got rid of him for you. You made a bargain.’
Jean stared at her. He didn’t trust his voice to deny it.
Tannhauser looked at Flore, too, and she at him, and his view of her changed.
Flore had pronounced a death sentence on the youths; and she knew it.
Tannhauser looked down into the street again. The militiamen had stopped bickering and were listening to their leader. Tannhauser turned back.
‘Pascale, give me the gun.’
Pascale pointed the pistol at the floor and with her ink-stained fingers she locked the arm of the dog into the safe position. She handed the gun to Tannhauser.
‘You’re wearing Father’s apron,’ she said.
‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘It’s drenched with blood.’
‘The blood is not mine, either.’
‘Will you loan me your knife?’
‘What you want to do is uglier than you think.’
‘Nothing could be uglier than what I think, except what I feel,’ said Pascale. ‘I want to reek of blood. Like you do.’
Tannhauser went to Flore. He put the pistol and his bow on the bed beside her. He held out his hand and she gave him her pistol and he locked the dog.
‘Do you have the saddle holsters? And the wallets?’
Flore pulled them from under the bed.
‘Pack a clean dress for each of you in the wallets. Wear shoes you can run in.’
Tannhauser checked both pistols and holstered them.
‘My father is a rich man,’ said Jean. ‘He could make you rich.’
Tannhauser went to Jean and cranked his right arm up between his shoulder blades and hauled him towards the door. A torrent of snivelling and bleating poured forth from Jean’s lips at such speed, and with so choked a voice that Tannhauser couldn’t understand a word, which was perhaps as well. When Jean grabbed the doorjamb and wrapped one leg around it, Tannhauser jerked the arm higher and snapped the bone just below the shoulder joint. Jean screamed.
Like all the other screams that had pierced the city that morning, it summoned neither help nor pity. Tannhauser tucked up Jean’s other arm and bundled him out to the landing. He shoved him to his knees by the wooden balustrade above the staircase. He glanced back to make sure that Ebert hadn’t moved from under the bed.
Pascale followed him to the landing.
Flore remained on her bed.
Jean wriggled like a bound sheep.
Tannhauser broke his other arm.
‘You are dead, son. Try to leave this life with some dignity.’
Jean submitted, though, in his sobs, pain and despair were more evident than pride.
Tannhauser looked at Pascale.
‘Pascale, are you ready?’
‘I am ready.’
‘We may both be damned for this, but I am damned already, so I risk nothing.’
‘I want to cross the bridge and not come back.’
Pascale held her hand out for the knife.
‘I don’t want to remember what it’s like to be on this side.’
‘To kill a man quickly requires skill, commitment, attention to detail, especially anatomic detail. God did not design us to be butchered, despite that we are besotted with the practice. So, imagine the ribs are armour, front and back, which is not far from the truth. Here, see for yourself.’
He prodded Jean about the thorax with the tips of his fingers to demonstrate. Pascale followed his example. She nodded. Jean squirmed and sobbed.
‘Oh my Lord God, I am most heartily sorry for all my sins –’
‘Pray in silence,’ said Tannhauser, ‘like the monks.’
Jean relapsed into bloody snivels.
Tannhauser continued, ‘To penetrate the ribs, then, is tricky, not to mention that the blade can get jammed between them, or even break. Besides which, you can inflict all manner of wounds without finding a vital organ. The world’s full of stabbed men. I’m one of them. Consider also that it is harder to cut a man’s throat, fatally, than is generally believed, for here – see the straps of muscle protecting the great blood vessels? You need a sharp knife, a determined stroke, to make a cut so deep. An
d cutting the windpipe itself may not be fatal at all, especially for a man who knows it.’
Pascale took all this in with great concentration.
‘However, feel here, behind the collarbones.’
Pascale prodded the root of Jean’s neck, cold to his tears.
‘The skin and muscle are stretched as thin as a drumhead, even on the strongest man. Right below is a trove of vital organs – the great vessels as they rise up from the heart, the lungs, the heart itself. Get a blade in there and even the luckiest will be hard pressed to survive. But the thrust must be vertical – thus – with your weight directed down through the hilt, either from above, if attacking from behind, or, if attacking from the front, from below.’
He demonstrated.
‘You understand?’
Pascale mimed the strokes with a clenched fist. She nodded. She looked up.
She said, ‘This is shameful, isn’t it?’
‘I’m glad you said that. Go and join Flore. I’ll take care of them.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I would rather be shameful than weak. I’m tired of being one of the weak people.’
Tannhauser nodded.
‘You won’t contradict me? Killing will make me stronger?’
‘It often fosters that illusion. Sometimes it’s no illusion at all.’
‘Let me have the knife.’
Tannhauser put the tip of the knife to the root of Jean’s neck, behind the right collarbone, angled obliquely, towards his heart.
‘Exactly as I have the blade here, see? Push harder than you think you need to, and follow through all the way down. Then turn the hilt thus, like the lever on a printing press.’
‘Pascale,’ begged Jean, ‘as I love you, please, in the name of Jesus, mercy.’
‘When Father screamed you stuffed your fingers in your ears.’
‘Don’t let your victim distract you,’ said Tannhauser. ‘It can be fatal.’
Tannhauser handed her the butcher’s knife. She took it. She grabbed Jean by the hair and pulled his head back. She studied his eyes, his tears, his mouth.
‘Pascale,’ said Jean. ‘Pascale.’
‘Most important of all, do not hesitate, for that is the very essence of a killer.’
Whatever Pascale felt, it was not hesitation. She put the tip of the knife to Jean’s neck and drove the blade down through his chest as if she’d done it as often as Tannhauser. Jean sighed. She pushed the hilt, like the lever on a printing press, and severed his heart.
