by Tim Willocks
The D’Aubray outrage had been prepared, not in hours – to exploit the unforeseen opportunity provided by the massacre – but over months. The wedding and its celebrations had been the opportunity. And of all the many such amusements laid on, none was more apt to purpose than the gala devised by the Queen, she who, more than any other figure, was seen as a traitor to the Catholic cause. Catherine would have understood the message, and its political implications, in an instant.
Tannhauser admitted the scheme’s brilliance. Retz had told him Coligny had threatened civil war only last week. The murder of the symbol could have tipped the balance with ease. Previous wars had blown up over much less.
Carla’s assassination had not been personal. It had been political. She and Symonne were pawns, sacrificed in an attack on Catherine de Medici and the policy of tolerance.
No one had expected Tannhauser’s arrival, not even Carla. Unwittingly he had threatened their scheme, long planned and prepared for that very night.
Orlandu, as Carla’s only potential defender in the city, had been spied on by the porter, who had indeed known who Tannhauser was. The porter had alerted Petit Christian, who had followed him to the Louvre and alerted Dominic Le Tellier. Dominic, improvising, had tried to get him killed in the Duello, and having failed, had arrested him.
Orlandu must have got wind of the intrigue, and been shot before he could warn or protect his mother. Why was he imprisoned, not killed?
The riddle was unravelling entire.
And the assassins next door would soon be itching.
Tannhauser looked at La Fosse. La Fosse cringed.
‘On the blood of Christ I played no knowing part in this conspiracy, let alone a willing one. You must believe me.’
‘I do. Who is your go-between?’
‘Boniface, the porter at the Collège d’Harcourt.’
‘Boniface, is it? Tell me, who is Orlandu?’
‘Orlandu? I don’t know. I have no idea. Truly, on my –’
‘What is Marcel Le Tellier’s role in all this?’
‘I didn’t know he had a role until he came here today with Christian. I’d never met the man, though I know his reputation.’
‘Is he a militant? One of the Pilgrims?’
‘I don’t know. Many conceal their convictions for fear of the Queen. In his position, obviously, he would be wise to do so.’
‘What did Marcel say?’
‘He questioned me on our conversation, which I related. I spoke of you only in the most respectful and fraternal terms.’
‘He told you exactly what to do with the coffin.’
‘Yes. I’d started making provision for the coffin as soon as you left. He told me to continue, precisely as you had asked, even though the body –’
‘He told you to expect these assassins and to do their bidding.’
‘Yes, exactly, though I didn’t know they were assassins until they arrived.’
Tannhauser considered the time had come to let the bravos earn their pay.
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about these men?’
La Fosse hesitated. Tannhauser leaned into his face.
‘If I die, they won’t know you helped me. If I live, you will need my charity.’
La Fosse said, ‘I believe Le Tellier wants you alive, if possible.’
‘Did he say that?’
‘No. I heard his men talking, about how to shoot to cripple you, not to kill.’
‘They’ll soon be forced to abandon that ambition.’
Tannhauser unrolled the cuffs of his boots to cover his groins.
‘If they succeed,’ said La Fosse, ‘they intend to take you to the Blind Piper, a villains’ den, I believe. If not, they will take your head for proof.’
‘You’re sure there’s five. You saw them. You saw them into the chapel.’
‘Five, yes, I’m certain.’
Tannhauser put a dagger to La Fosse’s throat. La Fosse farted.
‘You wouldn’t be the first priest I’ve killed.’
‘Please, brother, please –’
‘If you try to warn them, you’ll be the first to die.’
‘I swear. And the body. I’ve something else to tell you about the body –’
‘The body can wait. Come with me and keep quiet.’
Tannhauser pushed him from the room to the door in the corridor. On the far side he reckoned it twenty feet to the chapel. On this side, it was ten feet from the room.
Tannhauser spoke softly at the nape of La Fosse’s neck.
‘Stand with your face close to the door. Good. Now lift both your hands above your head. Place one on top of the other and both flat against the door. But do not push.’
La Fosse’s arms and hands shook as he obeyed. He whispered. ‘Why?’
‘I want you to stay in this exact position until I return. Understand?’
La Fosse’s shoulders sagged with partial relief. ‘Yes.’
Tannhauser grabbed the iron handle of the door with his right hand. The door was still a little ajar. He held it firm. He drove the dagger through the priest’s hands and nailed them to the timber. La Fosse screamed with a passion that curdled the blood. Tannhauser pushed the door half open, towards the chapel, and La Fosse shuffled with it. Beyond the priest’s pain-stiffened frame, he caught a shadow of movement at the end of the corridor.
Tannhauser turned and ran for the street.
The street was empty but for the rain. He grabbed the spontone and ran to the arch and stopped short of the double stone architrave. He held the spontone as a woodsman does an axe, his right knuckles almost grazing the wall, his left foot forward, eyes peeled for the arch. The spontone was a foot of winged steel blade, socketed on five feet of ash. Its weight soothed him while he waited. He heard voices in conference. They were strained but steady. There were no prayers for La Fosse, whose screams echoed within.
The sound tactic was to send three men out while two stalked the corridor.
The voices fell silent. Footfalls slapped on stone approaching the door.
No one running with a crossbow held his fingers on the trigger lever; it was too easily tripped. When the first of the bravos burst forth, his crossbow was at half-port, his right hand on the tiller. His speed carried him two paces clear before he saw Tannhauser, by which time the second bravo was looming in the arch.
Tannhauser stepped forward a pace and severed the first assassin’s left arm through the elbow. The crossbow fell. Tannhauser swivelled towards the archway.
The second bravo teetered on the threshold as he halted his charge. His bald pate was peeling from the sun. As he brought his crossbow to bear Tannhauser sidestepped its path and slammed the flat of his blade down hard where the stirrup met the curve of the bow. The crossbow dipped and the blow tripped the lever and the bolt was shot. As it buried itself in the baked dirt of the road, Tannhauser whipped the blade back up and stabbed the bravo in the throat. He felt the tip bite into the pulp of the spine and he stepped back and heaved. The bone clung on as the blade plucked free and the bravo was dragged from the threshold to fall on his face. His peeling head convulsed atop the flaccid body and he gargled on his blood as it spilled from his mouth.
Through the archway, a shape stepped in front of the candlelight.
Tannhauser lunged to the wall to clear the arc of fire and a bolt hissed forth from the gloom and split the timbers of a house across the street. Tannhauser looked through the arch.
The third hireling had one foot in the stirrup of his bow and was drawing the string, a bolt clamped between his gums. Tannhauser’s concern was the other two bravos, whose weapons were already loaded. Either might still be behind the door. He turned.
The one-armed man knelt on his heels, two yards behind him in the rain, staring at the torrents gouting from his sleeve. Tannhauser hoisted him by the stump and shoved him to stumble through the arch. His entrance flushed no hidden danger. As Tannhauser followed him the third bravo freed his jaws of the bo
lt and called back over his shoulder, towards the sacristy door.
‘He’s here! He’s here!’
He seemed not to realise that his voice was hoarse with terror.
Tannhauser let him slot the bolt between the fingers of the nut, then embossed him though the chest unto the wings. He swayed from the waist to avoid the spray that blurted black and foamy from the sundered gullet, and he held the fellow skewered against the rail while he stole an extra bolt from his belt and put it between his teeth. He tugged the crossbow from the slackened hands and let the corpse slide from the blade to befoul the narthex. He flipped his right hand to take the spontone in a javelin grip, in case he was called upon to throw it. He lanced the one-armed man through the liver and kicked him free of the blade to splash in the shambles.
He strode towards the sacristy door.
The door stood open, just short of the chancel, in the wall of the right hand aisle. It was hinged on the left and opened into the corridor. Tannhauser checked the crossbow. The lath was steel, the bolt holder shaped from a strip of antler. The bolt head looked like a giant horseshoe nail. It was small as crossbows went, as befitted an assassin’s needs, but at forty yards it would punch a hole through plate steel.
He heard the priest begging the last two hirelings to free him, with the desperation of one not ashamed to repeat himself. They had not done so. La Fosse’s bleating must have drowned what little noise the first three had made in meeting their end. Tannhauser craned his left eye around the doorjamb.
The fourth bravo stood in half-crouch, some fifteen feet along the corridor. His back was to Tannhauser. Just beyond, La Fosse stood on his toes, his face tilted up between his pinioned arms, and pleaded with God. His body on the door blocked a good half of the passageway. As Tannhauser had calculated, the geometry had forced the fourth man into a cramped position on the left, requiring cumbersome footwork to turn and fire. Judging by the skittish movements of his head and shoulders, he was trying to see what was going on beyond the priest.
‘Munt! By the shit of Jesus, where are you?’
A muffled shout was returned from his unseen confederate.
Tannhauser strode down the passageway, his javelin arm cocked, the priest’s anguish once again a boon. At his fourth step the assassin heard him but the walls were too narrow to allow him to spin with the crossbow levelled. He had to point the bolt upwards as he shifted both feet to step and turn, then lower it to aim. He reacted with admirable speed but before the vertical arc was half-complete, Tannhauser had rammed a foot of steel through his armpit. The damage to the lights and heart was so instant and so vast, the only sound to mark his death was a bubbling wheeze. Tannhauser booted him from the blade and advanced as far as the shield provided by La Fosse. He nudged him with a shoulder and La Fosse howled.
Tannhauser spoke through the bolt between his teeth.
‘Pray louder.’
La Fosse clenched his eyelids and did his best.
Tannhauser stepped past the priest and was back in the house. He stopped short of the doorway to the main room and stacked the spontone by the jamb. He hefted the crossbow. He called, his voice disguised by the bolt and La Fosse’s Latin.
‘Munt? Where are you?’
‘Get out! He’s in the chapel! Schmidt’s dead!’
Tannhauser stepped into the doorframe and levelled the crossbow.
Munt was standing in the rain outside the front door.
He fled south.
Tannhauser strode to the door and used the jamb as a bench to steady his elbow. Munt had dropped his weapon to aid his flight but the target would hardly have taxed a lesser marksman. Tannhauser shot him between the shoulders and saw the bolt vanish. It kicked up water from a puddle thirty paces down the street. Munt arched his back and veered aslant on buckling legs. He slithered to his hands and knees. He looked up towards the crossroads, as if some miracle might be found there. His arms went and his face hit the mud and he stirred no more.
Tannhauser laid up the crossbow on its stirrup and took the spare bolt from his mouth. He stepped from the doorway and waved, even though, apart from Munt’s corpse, he saw nothing of note. Sure enough, and conjured as if from nothing more material than sunlight, Grégoire appeared and charged through the rain towards him.
Grégoire hurdled Munt and clapped his spade-like hands. He laughed as he ran with the strange halting laugh that had first so taken Tannhauser’s fancy. The bald dog cavorted by his ankles, sheathed in a scaly black carapace of human blood. Grégoire spread five fingers. Tannhauser nodded.
Grégoire cocked an ear. ‘Who’s that?’
‘It’s La Fosse thanking God for our deliverance.’
Tannhauser remembered the coffin.
Despair dimmed the afterglow of combat.
‘Fetch Clementine. Haul that body to the chapel.’
Tannhauser dragged Schmidt into the narthex. He searched all three and found twelve écus d’or and some silver between them. A doubloon apiece.
He went to the corpse in the corridor and found four more écus. La Fosse was trembling and muttering like a man who had lost his mind. In an attempt to persuade the Almighty of his worth, he appeared to be comparing himself to the Thief on the Cross.
‘The Good Thief joined Christ in Paradise, not the good pederast.’
Tannhauser searched him and recovered both his double pistoles. He braced the priest’s hands to the door and pulled the dagger free. La Fosse groaned and slid to the floor. It didn’t seem necessary to tell him not to move.
Tannhauser dragged the fourth corpse to join the others in the chapel. Grégoire appeared, soaked. In Munt’s purse he had found a bowstring with short iron rods attached to either end for grips. By garrotting Munt’s feet with one hand, and wrapping a turn of Clementine’s tail around the other, he had delegated the bulk of the effort to her. He showed Tannhauser four écus.
‘At least we’re making a profit,’ said Tannhauser.
‘This is yours, too.’
Grégoire gave him a fistful of small coins, mainly coppers.
‘I sold the shoes. I hope it’s enough.’
The sum was a small fraction of what Tannhauser had paid the day before.
‘You drove a hard bargain. Well done.’
Grégoire nodded.
‘And I commend you on your honesty.’
‘I’m not a thief any more.’
‘We may yet call on that talent, but you’re right not to steal from your mates.’ Tannhauser nodded towards the street. ‘Fetch the crossbows. Remove any bolts and pull the triggers before you pick them up. Watch your fingers.’
Tannhauser laid out Munt alongside his four accomplices. Their blood slaked the floor of the narthex and their mouths and eyes gaped up at Heaven, as if struck down by a peevish god while caught in some arcane ritual of penitence. He wondered if he shouldn’t decapitate them and leave their heads on the altar for Marcel. It was no bad thing to have one’s enemies think one deranged. But Carla’s remains were not yet desecrate, for he had killed them all outside the bounds of the chapel proper, and so it should stay.
He glanced at the coffin. Guilt and grief intermingled in his gut.
He sought further practical diversions.
In the corner behind one door he found a leather satchel. It contained rope and a pair of leg irons, lead-weighted cudgels, spare bolts, half a loaf and a heel of cheese. He discarded the cudgels and leg irons. Grégoire returned and they examined the five crossbows. All were trued and fettled. All were small and could be cocked by a stout back and a strong pair of hands. One was made all of steel and dressed with ivory and silver. The draw weights were double that of Frogier’s bow.
‘If you didn’t grow up in a stable, where were you raised?’
‘Here in the Ville,’ said Grégoire. ‘In Les Halles.’
Whoever had adopted Grégoire from the crib in Notre-Dame had done so not out of charity but to use him as the pawn of a gang of beggars. Beyond a certain age his face had been
so repellent that his earnings in disgust far exceeded those in alms. After that he had been used as a decoy and a tout for a variety of cutpurses and snatchers. He chewed soap and feigned fits. He trailed rich men to their homes to furnish burglars. He watched his comrades disembowelled and hung in the Place de Grève. One day he saw some thieves about to steal a horse and cart filled with supplies. He warned the owner, who discovered his own boy was their accomplice. In a fit of gratitude that proved to be uncharacteristic, Engel had given Grégoire the job.
‘So you’d made good,’ said Tannhauser, ‘until I came along.’
‘A new boy means more work for Engel. He’ll take me back.’
‘I doubt that.’
Lucifer trotted in from the street, panting with the air of a dog which, despite its scorched condition, had found a female of the species willing to be mounted. He inspected the dead bodies and selected two to piss on.
‘If you’re going to take him home, he’ll have to be better trained.’
As a matter of fact, not of self-pity, Grégoire said, ‘I don’t have a home.’
‘I mean my home, in the south. Will you come?’
Grégoire stared at him. He blinked his eyes, as if at some inner vision.
‘Yes, master. If we can get there.’
‘I’m not going to die in Paris. And having a varlet seems to suit me.’
‘A varlet?’
‘It’s a nobler version of a lackey, with better wages.’
These details seemed to make the prospect more plausible. Grégoire brightened up. As if eager to be on the road he said, ‘Have you seen your wife yet?’
‘My next duty, and one I’ve put off long enough.’
‘I am sad for you.’
‘Take the satchel and these weapons to the kitchen. Get something to eat.’
Grégoire reached into his shirt and produced a crumpled mass of fabric saturated with sweat and water. He held it out. It wasn’t until Tannhauser made out that it was tied with a sodden ribbon that he realised it was the christening robe.
