Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  ‘Send a man,’ repeated Tannhauser.

  He turned and strolled back to the cart. He smiled at the children. Frogier gaped.

  Pascale said, ‘Isn’t it dangerous to turn your back on them?’

  ‘If I stayed to face Bonnett I’d be back where I started. He now has an easy choice: he can send for Garnier. His other choice is to cross the chain and confront me. If the latter, I’ll see it in your faces.’

  ‘What if he just sits back on his barrel and does nothing?’ asked Pascale.

  ‘Let’s bless our good fortune you’re not in the militia.’

  ‘Bonnett is sending a man,’ reported Juste.

  ‘Why didn’t you just tell him to let us pass?’ asked Pascale.

  ‘I want a pass from Garnier. If he spares you once, he’ll likely do so again should your paths cross.’

  As Tannhauser made the rifle safe he noted they had stopped by an eating house. It was closed. A man watched the scene on the bridge from an upper window.

  ‘How much to feed five children and two loyal servants of the King?’

  ‘What price to a man’s soul if he honour not the Sabbath –?’

  Frogier said, ‘Jean, don’t make us break the door down.’

  They went indoors and Pascale forced Juste to change his seat twice, first when he claimed a spot next to his sweetheart, whereupon she elbowed her way in between them, and again when she insisted that Tannhauser sit between herself and Flore. The freeing of the necessary space banished Juste to the opposing bench with the Mice, at as far a remove from his love as the table permitted. Pascale peeled off the kidskin gloves she’d found in the stables. Flore stared at the ink on Pascale’s fingers. She started crying. Juste stood up as if to comfort her, but Tannhauser shook his head in a signal to let her be.

  Frogier pulled up a stool at the head of the table and polished his tooth. The cook, belying his qualms about the Sabbath, had already been busy, and probably short of customers, for in addition to a cold flesh pie made of minced pork, small birds and gobbets of rabbit, he laid out a tray of cheese tartlets, a charger of stuffed eggs, a blankmanger of rice with dark chicken meat, and a pottage of sundry beef innards that Tannhauser sniffed and rejected on behalf of all for fear of the flux. Jugs of wine arrived.

  Tannhauser crossed himself. The children sat on the benches with their hands clasped in their laps, beset by a shared melancholy and showing no appetite for the spread. Frogier began to shovel blankmanger onto his platter. Tannhauser felt obliged to raise the table’s spirits.

  ‘I’m glad of the chance to enjoy this unexpected dinner with you –’

  ‘Because it will be the last chance we ever have?’ said Pascale.

  Flore stifled a sob.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Tannhauser. ‘It’s the first of many, or, in our case, the second. There, you see? We’ll have all manner of dinners. And one day we’ll look back and say “Remember when we ate stuffed eggs on the Petit Pont, on Saint Bartholomew’s Day?”’

  ‘There’ll be too much else to remember,’ said Pascale.

  ‘Much, but not too much. We’ve each lost someone dear –’ He grimaced. ‘We’ve each seen things that shouldn’t be seen.’

  Frogier, his mouth bulging with rice, grunted his agreement.

  ‘It’s a bad day but it will pass,’ said Tannhauser, ‘as all days do, good and bad both. And even on a bad day you can find good moments, if you look hard enough.’

  He dredged the bloody images in his mind, in a vain search for a suitable illustration of this cheery principle.

  ‘Such as saving the dog? Lucifer?’ ventured Juste.

  ‘Exactly, Juste, exactly.’

  ‘Or feeding the apples to Clementine?’ said Flore.

  ‘Indeed, Flore – Geneviève – even better.’

  Pascale said, ‘And when you covered Father with his apron.’

  The memory was offered sincerely, but the table fell back into its former gloom.

  ‘Please don’t leave us, Mattias,’ said Flore.

  His chest felt as if it was encased in armour made for a much smaller man.

  ‘It won’t be for long,’ he said. ‘Frogier’s sister will take good care of you. Who could be more reliable than a woman who sent her husband to the gallows and made it pay?’

  The humour was lost on all but Frogier, whose mouth was too full to laugh.

  Tannhauser poured a beaker of wine and drained it. It was good.

  ‘Now, with Frogier’s permission, I’m going to eat.’

  Tannhauser sat down and took a halved egg from the charger. As he raised it to his mouth the ensemble proved too dainty for his coarsened fingers and the stuffing popped free. It cascaded down the front of his shirt to embellish the bloodstains.

  Tybaut’s girls broke their long silence by exploding into laughter.

  Tannhauser doubted a sweeter sound had been heard in Paris all day.

  And for all he knew, since the Romans left.

  On impulse he grossly exaggerated his surprise, then his dismay, then he gasped in horror at the damage to his shirt. He must have made a passable clown for the giggles were redoubled. Juste joined in. Tannhauser pitched the empty hard-boiled white through the door to the street and took a second egg.

  With painstaking slowness he brought it towards his lips. Silence fell as they watched its progress. Tannhauser parted his jaws to their maximum extent. At the last moment he squeezed the white and the lightly browned glob of yolk, chopped parsley and butter tumbled down his chest to join the first. Flore lent her voice to the renewed mirth and Tannhauser turned to his left and winked at Pascale, who shook her head but rewarded him with the light of a begrudging smile.

  ‘These eggs are jinxed,’ he said. ‘Anne, darling, pass me a slice of pie.’

  To the delight of all, Pascale passed Tannhauser a third egg.

  The meal progressed in a light vein and when Pascale began flicking grains of rice at Juste, and Tybaut’s girls joined in, Tannhauser did not chide them. He blunted the edge of his hunger and took more wine. He kept Frogier’s beaker brimful, and in return Frogier kept him busy refilling it. He ordered dessert. The cook served up a batch of small fig pies basted with honey, and a dish of candied orange peel and a pitcher of cow’s milk, and while the youngsters were thus occupied he questioned Frogier.

  ‘If you were to see a man of middle years, dressed in black, with a gold chain on his chest, and riding a sorrel horse with white feet, who might you be looking at?’

  Frogier was hovering over his stool as he watched the decimation of the fig pies, which his young companions had kept beyond his reach. He sat back down and his expression changed to one that Tannhauser recognised from that morning.

  ‘I’d be looking at Marcel Le Tellier, with the hope that he hadn’t seen me, though it’s likely he would have done so before I noticed even the horse.’

  The name caught Tannhauser unawares. Grégoire must have recognised the man and told Juste. And Juste and Tannhauser between them had misunderstood him.

  ‘Why would you want to avoid him?’

  ‘He’d ask questions I’d rather not answer and set chores I’d rather not do.’

  Tannhauser smiled at the delicacy of this rebuke.

  ‘Tell me all you know about him.’

  ‘What can a humble constable know of the doings of the mighty?’

  ‘Consider yourself the one-eyed man in this kingdom of the blind.’

  Frogier cast a maudlin glance at the last of the fig pies.

  ‘Geneviève, give him the pie,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘But we saved it for you,’ said Flore.

  ‘Frogier’s need is greater. Perhaps it will loosen his tongue.’

  Pascale, who was seated between the two men and considered herself their equal in the discussion, intercepted the pie. She smiled unkindly at Frogier as she answered.

  ‘Marcel Le Tellier is the Lieutenant Criminel of the Châtelet. He stands above all the commissaires and has the
powers of a judge.’

  ‘What does Le Tellier’s chain look like?’

  ‘It’s made of gold cockleshells,’ said Pascale.

  ‘The Order of Saint Michael,’ said Tannhauser.

  By tradition, the membership was limited to fifty but in recent years Charles had created hundreds of knights in return for cash and political support.

  Tannhauser said, ‘If he didn’t buy it, which I would guess is beyond the means of even the Lieutenant Criminel, he must wield a good deal of influence at the court.’

  Frogier stared at the pie, still hoping to earn it.

  ‘Le Tellier was knighted while he was still commissaire of the seventh quartier, in Les Halles. The honour helped him to usurp his predecessor, who retired under the threat of various indictments. Marcel is a great schemer. He had to be. He’s not the first to rise to his office from a mere sergent, but no one can remember the last. His father was a prud’homme appointed by the royal cook to buy fish from the market for the King’s table. You speak of kingdoms, Les Halles is Le Tellier’s kingdom. He was born in the shadow of the Châtelet with the threefold stench in his nostrils – the fish, the abattoirs and the Cemetery of the Innocents.’ Frogier rubbed his single tooth. ‘Do you know how much a cow shits when it stumbles into Paris? No less than we will on the day we enter Hell.’

  ‘So Marcel is a great solver of crimes,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘No, no, no,’ said Frogier, again eyeing the pie. ‘Solving crimes – which could not be easier, thanks to the rack – is not the Châtelet’s purpose. Our purpose is to gather money for the King and to pay our own miserly wages. This money, on the whole, derives from the law-abiding. Almost anything you can do – run an inn, sell a pair of shoes, operate a wagon – requires the payment of fees. To sell a salmon you must pay four different duties. For infringements of the regulations governing such activities, which are many, and designed to be easily broken, there are fines. In addition we serve summonses, and we –’

  ‘What do the law-abiding get in return?’

  ‘In return we execute an enormous number of criminals, mainly thieves, but also blasphemers, sodomites and murderers. The solving of a crime requires only two things – an accused and his confession, and since the torturers of the Châtelet are the most experienced in the world, neither is hard to acquire.’

  ‘We’re still waiting to hear something useful,’ said Pascale.

  This was too much for Frogier. Tannhauser saw his eyes withdraw like a lizard’s. He assuaged the sergent’s dignity by pushing the fig pie towards him. Frogier crammed it between his gums as if he feared it might be taken back.

  Pascale scowled at him. ‘Marcel served in a quartier where most of the food that feeds Paris is bought and sold. More money runs through there than through the treasury. He extorted a fortune for his masters, and himself, and climbed the ladder.’

  Crumbs spilled from Frogier’s open mouth. ‘That’s exactly what he did.’

  ‘Is he a violent man?’ asked Tannhauser.

  ‘He has no need to be. In Les Halles brawn is cheaper than fish guts.’ Frogier stabbed a finger at the contents of his mouth, which he opened his jaws to reveal. ‘You could buy a broken leg with this fig pie. Marcel always had stout lads with him, his bailiffs, a Norman called Baro. Some rose with him. In fact, he’s famous for his weak stomach. He can’t abide torture or executions, though, I should say, only as a spectator. He’s sent thousands to the Place de Grève, and more to the dungeons, without a single Amen.’

  ‘Spies,’ said Pascale. ‘He’s known for that, too.’

  ‘True.’ Frogier glared at her. ‘From the beginning he had his noses. Drovers peaching on the butchers, wives on their husbands. Even lawyers on their clients, would you believe?’

  ‘Why should that be a surprise?’ said Pascale.

  ‘That’s why they raised him to the rank of commissaire. He knew more than any three other commissaires roped together – any six, for after all what’s a commissaire? A man who wants to sit at home while his sergents gather fees to buy jewels for his wife. Now Marcel runs whole chains of spies that reach so far most don’t even know they serve him. If five men gather in a tavern for a drink, one will be in Marcel’s pocket.’

  ‘Maybe you work for him yourself,’ said Pascale.

  ‘And maybe you too, for you’re a bold enough young –’ Frogier caught Tannhauser’s look ‘– lady. I have my own masters, and whose parsnips they’re buttering I can’t say, though I will say, Excellency, that few are as kind as you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have given him the pie,’ said Pascale.

  Tannhauser nodded, his thoughts elsewhere. He was tangled in the web of Marcel Le Tellier. Both instinct and logic insisted. The several riddles were becoming one. The porter, Petit Christian, Dominic Le Tellier, Orlandu, his own arrest: that thread at least was certain. The sacking of the Hôtel D’Aubray at a time when little other mischief was afoot beyond the Louvre. Marcel’s reach embraced it all. If so, it was a large and intricate design, even for him. What would justify such an effort?

  It was a fair bet that Marcel was acting for someone else. In the squalid context of the Châtelet he was a great man; but the Louvre was full of grandees to whom he would never be anything more than the son of a fishmonger. They could buy a Lieutenant Criminel for a false smile. Beyond the court, Paris was crawling with men rich in money and power.

  Tannhauser massaged his eyeballs.

  The riddle still had a thousand possible solutions. The key could only be Orlandu. What had he got himself into, and why would it require the assassination of Carla? Love, politics or money. A common crime, even murder, would hardly be worth so much effort, unless it had provoked some extreme lust for revenge, the potent elixir Retz had extolled. Killing Orlandu’s mother was a sure and cruel way to cause pain. He had to ask Orlandu. Or better still, Marcel Le Tellier.

  ‘Where does Marcel live?’

  ‘In Les Halles,’ answered Frogier. ‘He bought an old hôtel with a view of the river, west of Saint-Denis, near Crucé’s abattoir. Anyone there will know it. He could’ve done a lot better, but we reckon he can’t sleep without the smell.’ Frogier’s anxiety emerged from the fog of wine. ‘You’re not going to beard Le Tellier?’

  ‘God forbid. I was already warned against the man by friends in the Louvre, discreetly, you understand. I’d simply forgotten his name.’

  Juste was bursting with his own question. Tannhauser prompted him.

  ‘Juste, you were at the Louvre.’

  ‘Yes, sire. I saw a captain of the guards there called Dominic Le Tellier –’

  ‘Marcel’s son,’ slurred Frogier. ‘Though some do wonder, for he hasn’t the wit of this empty jug. Marcel was so much devoted to his wife he never took another. A great beauty, I saw her once, but she wasted away and died. Melancholia. Her brother – she doted on him, they say – came to a bad end. Broken on the wheel, they say. Le Tellier wears the black for her, that is the wife. Has a Mass said for her every Friday, at Saint-Jacques.’

  A sergent appeared at the doorway. ‘Alois? Garnier’s at his chain.’

  Tannhauser hauled Frogier to his feet. He looked at the others.

  ‘Stay here until I call you. And put those gloves back on.’

  Ensign Bonnett cringed against the cask as Bernard Garnier, his enormous fists knuckled on his hips, bent forward from the waist and lathered him with insults.

  Frogier leaned on the sideboard of the cart as if he might fall without it.

  Tannhauser propped his rifle against a wheel and draped the holsters over the rim. The spontone, its blade sleeved in a leather feedbag, was ready to hand. Tannhauser took two steps towards the chain and stopped and waited. While he waited he took the measure of each militiaman, and knew he could kill them all, and in what probable order, bar the fleetest of foot. Garnier caught some murmured warning and straightened up. He sleeved spittle from his lips and turned and glowered. He was huge and full of rage. Tannhauser sense
d a man who felt that the world had not recognised his quality with sufficient gratitude or honours.

  ‘Captain Garnier. Let us parley in private.’

  Garnier flicked a hand and his men lowered the chain. He walked over.

  ‘At your service, your Excellency.’ He managed a bow.

  ‘The formalities are appreciated but we may drop them. I’ve a favour to ask.’

  ‘Those fools have no right to hinder such as you. They’ll be chastised.’

  ‘They look chastened enough to me. Commendable.’

  Garnier was taken aback by the compliment.

  ‘I do my best with what I’ve got. These aren’t trained soldiers. They don’t know how to give this rebellion its due. But if they saw what I’ve just seen they’d know it. They’d shit their Sunday breeches.’

  Garnier played the plain, gruff sort, the brute. The role fitted him so well that Tannhauser wasn’t sure how sly a fox hid within.

  ‘The Huguenot army is leaderless and miles away,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘I’m talking about a massacre in the sixteenth quartier.’

  ‘I rode through there myself. The riot was murderous and general.’

  ‘A massacre of stalwart militiamen. Good and true citizens, serving God and King. Ambushed and slaughtered like cattle. A murdered captain. Mutilations to turn the stomach of a Turk. At least twenty men dead.’

  Tannhauser heard some muffled oath from Frogier.

  Garnier threw the sergent a filthy look. Tannhauser didn’t turn.

  ‘I am a butcher by trade and I never saw an abattoir so bloody. They were still carrying bodies out when I left. The printer had two daughters, they say.’

  ‘The printer?’

  ‘You were seen down that way, on a warhorse, they said. Some say with two boys, others swore it was two girls. You’re not an easy man to miss. Or to forget.’

  Tannhauser looked Garnier in the eyes. After a moment, Garnier looked away.

  ‘We must find the murderers before they strike again,’ said Garnier, ‘and since, as you say, you rode through, you might have seen something suspicious.’