Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  Carla saw figures appear on the rooftops on the south side of the yard. They stood and watched, unnerved by the gunfire and the savagery.

  Amparo started crying and Carla held her closer.

  She saw Grymonde loom from a black slit, his enormous head and shoulders unmistakable. He cut the throats of a musket man and his flanker from behind before they knew they were dying. He ran to the fire pit and raised his arms, bloody knives in either hand.

  ‘Fight for your very souls! For Cockaigne!’

  A pikeman lunged at him and Grymonde stepped aside and stabbed him with both blades and hoisted him and rammed him face-down into the coals amid a fountain of sparks. The spit and its roast tumbled over. Flame whooshed from the pit as the pikeman’s hair caught and Grymonde let him go. Tiles and slung stones began to hurtle from the roofs along with jeers and oaths of hatred. The pikeman staggered away, lumps of glowing charcoal embedded in his face, his head ablaze. Grymonde took the fallen pike and spun and launched it overarm at a clutch of militia. They scattered and one was impaled through and through, and as the weight threw him down the pike impaled a second through the legs. The lamed one dragged himself clear and crawled, and a woman darted from the shadows and stabbed him in the neck.

  Grymonde looked up at Carla. He tossed his chin at the front door.

  Carla walked to Alice and kissed Amparo, who still cried, and though it tore at her innards she put the babe in Alice’s arms and hurried from the birthing room.

  Her belly cramped and she ignored it. The stairway was dark; a yellow glow from below. Her hips were stiff and she had to lean on the wall. Towards the bottom she lost her footing and slid down the last few steps on her arse. She thrust herself to her feet and staggered across the kitchen.

  She saw Estelle who stood looking at the cards still spread on the table.

  ‘Grymonde is here. Help me open the door.’

  Gunshots boomed outside, individual fire. Estelle sprinted ahead of her and drew the lower bolt. Together they lifted the heavy bracing timber. Carla wondered how the child had managed it alone. She pulled open the door and Grymonde barged in as a musket ball threw splinters into his neck. As he shut the door, Papin threw his shoulder against it and stumbled inside. Grymonde restored the bar to its hasps and threw the bolts.

  ‘I didn’t find Mattias,’ said Grymonde. ‘Only the bodies he left behind him. Then I got wind of this.’ He turned and saw Estelle. ‘La Rossa? My, what a beauty you’re becoming.’

  ‘I’m not a Judas,’ said Estelle.

  ‘How could you be a Judas? You’re the dragon’s wings.’

  He grinned and stroked her hair.

  ‘Can I have my knife back then?’

  Grymonde returned her small knife and she put it in her belt.

  ‘Now, to the roof, all of you. Papin, the sledgehammer there, fetch it.’

  Grymonde grabbed a satchel from a peg and shook a purse to show them it clinked and stuffed it inside.

  ‘Papin, stop trembling, these girls shame you. Take the sledge to the roof.’

  ‘How did you get away, Papin?’ Estelle stared at him.

  ‘From one sergent? Easy. How did you?’

  ‘No more talk,’ said Grymonde. ‘Action. Action.’

  Papin took the sledgehammer and lumbered to the stairs.

  ‘Estelle,’ said Carla, ‘will you go and tell Alice to wrap Amparo snugly?’

  Estelle ran after Papin. Grymonde put a powder horn and a pouch of balls in the satchel. He took Carla’s arm and walked her to the stair. He stopped at the table to look at the cards.

  ‘The Pilgrims of Saint-Jacques are here to rescue you. There’s no other reason those fanatics would come. If it were they alone I might let you go, for I believe their motives are gallant, for once. But Petit Christian is out there, too.’

  ‘It was he who hired you.’

  ‘Aye. I still don’t know why. He also hired five bravos to capture or kill Mattias. If his master wanted you dead this morning, he’s even keener now, though of all that business I’m sure the Pilgrims are ignorant. So, please, to the roof.’

  Grymonde scooped the cards from the table along with the rest of the deck.

  ‘I don’t think Alice can get to the roof,’ said Carla. ‘I don’t think she’ll try.’

  ‘Tell me what was the first card in the earlier spread?’

  ‘The Hanged Man, reversed. Alice called it the Traitor.’

  ‘The dragon bites its tail.’ He nodded. ‘I’ve destroyed Cockaigne. And the quester?’

  ‘Death.’

  ‘You’re right, Mam won’t try, so let her be.’

  The windowpanes beyond the shutters smashed. Fists hammered at the door and voices demanded it be opened in the name of the King.

  Carla climbed the stairs. She felt something shift inside her. She pushed herself upwards against the walls on either side. She reached the top and felt something slide down her leg. She ignored it. She shook off a wave of faintness. Her baby.

  In the birthing room, Alice sat on the bed with Amparo on her lap. Estelle sat beside her, studying how to swaddle the babe in the shawl. Carla went over and Alice held out Amparo and Carla took her.

  ‘Can I hold her?’ asked Estelle. ‘I’m clean now.’

  Carla overcame her instinct and put Amparo in Estelle’s arms. Alice clucked her tongue in gratitude. Estelle took a sharp breath and a great wonder flooded her fierce grey eyes. As if she sensed the immensity and the mystery of her own destiny – her own beginnings and her own future – she and Amparo seemed to dissolve into each other, joined by a love without boundaries, for it had no purpose to explain or define its existence. Carla knew it was a bond that Estelle would never relinquish, for nothing had ever been so truly and purely her own. Estelle looked up at her with a piercing sorrow.

  ‘I was bad, this morning. I said I’d kill your baby. I’m sorry, Carla.’

  ‘You were frightened. So was I. Don’t think about it any more.’

  ‘She’s so small.’

  ‘You were born in this room,’ said Carla. ‘Just like Amparo.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes you were,’ said Alice. ‘A right little devil from the start.’

  Estelle thought about this.

  ‘So am I one of us?’

  ‘One of us? Of course you’re one of us. We’d be a pretty poor us without you.’ Alice put an arm around her. ‘All daughters together. Carla, sit down here, love.’

  Carla thought of the roof, the assault below. She sat down and Alice put her other arm around her. Carla felt the warmth of the old, lumpy body; its pain; its joy; its strength. Emotion overwhelmed her.

  ‘Some say living is harder than dying, and you can see their point,’ said Alice. ‘But not when the living’s as good as this, eh?’

  She laughed her coarse, hag’s laugh. Carla and Estelle laughed, too.

  Grymonde appeared at the doorway. He looked at them and his brow furrowed, and, whatever he saw, and whatever it made him feel, it stopped him entering the room.

  ‘We must hurry.’

  ‘There’s no hurry here,’ said Alice. ‘Wait outside.’

  Grymonde retreated into the dark.

  ‘Carla?’

  Carla looked at her, their brows almost touching, and in Alice she saw no fear.

  She saw peace.

  ‘You bore great horrors to come to this home. You brought great beauty with you. You brought life. You brought love. You even brought out the goodness in this mother’s son, and that’s a feat no one else ever managed.’

  Carla looked at the bony girl who cradled her babe.

  Carla said, ‘No one except Estelle.’

  Alice looked at Estelle. She nodded. She turned back to Carla.

  ‘This woman blesses you with all her heart.’

  ‘Oh Alice.’

  ‘May I call you my sister?’

  ‘You are my sister. My mother. My angel.’

  ‘Amparo is still here. She watches ove
r her namesake, now. And fear not, this old girl will be there to see you endure. And you will endure, so don’t despair. Mattias will find you. You summoned the pale horseman. He will come.’

  ‘I love you.’

  Carla cradled Alice’s head and kissed her on the lips. She kept her eyes open, and so did Alice. The world retreated as they filled each other’s spirit to the brim. They parted.

  Alice turned to Estelle.

  ‘Can this old girl get a kiss from you, too?’

  Estelle hesitated. Perhaps she wasn’t used to kisses. Perhaps she was overpowered by the blotched, purpled, drooping face that loomed over her.

  ‘Ah, go on, you little devil.’

  Alice pursed her lips and Estelle kissed her.

  ‘Now, you’d better go with his majesty.’

  Alice gave Carla one last squeeze.

  ‘Charge towards the Fire.’

  Carla took Amparo and held Estelle’s hand. She looked at Alice.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave her. Alice turned her face away.

  ‘Estelle, be a love. Take Carla to the roof. Don’t look back.’

  Outside the door they found Grymonde leaning against the wall, his eyes pressed into the bulk of his forearm. He carried Altan’s horn bow and its quiver of arrows across his back. He heard them emerge but didn’t move.

  ‘Well, is the coven over?’

  ‘Tell us what to do,’ said Carla.

  Grymonde sniffed and swallowed and drew his arm aside. He pulled his double-barrelled pistol from his belt and levered one of the hammers back and forth. He looked at Carla and she saw the pain in his gorgeous brown eyes.

  ‘Do you know how this works?’

  ‘I’m not going to kill with my baby in my arms.’

  ‘I know how it works,’ said Estelle. ‘You showed me, remember?’

  ‘Of you, La Rossa, I remember everything.’

  Grymonde gave Estelle the pistol. She held it against her narrow chest in both hands. The gun appeared huge, but she seemed unimpressed. Grymonde took a cord from around his neck and looped it around hers. The cord was threaded through a winding key. He tucked it inside her frock. Below, the front door rattled with what sounded like the bite of an axe.

  ‘You’re going to take Carla to the convent of the Filles-Dieu.’

  Estelle nodded. Grymonde looked at Carla.

  ‘As long as no one knows you’re there – and you don’t tell them who you are – you’ll be safe until Mattias finds you. Or I do.’

  ‘I’ll have a kiss from you, too, while we’re at it,’ called Alice.

  ‘Is Alice coming with us?’ asked Estelle.

  ‘We’ll meet her later on. Wait for me on the roof.’

  Carla could not help but steal a final glance.

  As Grymonde walked over to his mother, she held out her arms to him.

  The climb up two dark flights took more out of Carla than she had reckoned on. Her joints had stiffened since the labour, her stretched tissues felt tight. Each step was clumsy, heavy, uncertain. Estelle came behind her. At the top was a door that gave out into the last of the twilight. Carla leaned against the jamb. Her head swam. She closed her eyes and held Amparo tight. Her pelvis was a mass of dull pain. The pain she could take. The fatigue she could overcome by an act of will; the damaged sinews she could not.

  She opened her eyes.

  The roof sloped gently to a sheer drop, beyond which raged the madness in the yard. She saw youthful shadows on the other rooftops, ripping up tiles and hurling them down. A musket boomed and a mass of skirts plummeted earthward. The sound of the axe from below was steady. Carla saw Papin.

  He huddled in the shade of Grymonde’s tower and didn’t look at her.

  The tower at close quarters was even more bizarre and ramshackle than it appeared from below. It looked more like something built for the amusement of children than a monument to Grymonde’s glory. The three storeys were no more than three huts in a precarious stack, each smaller than the one below. The lowermost was built almost to the edge of the roof, and the whole had twisted and sagged under its own weight. It strained against the ship’s cable tied about its middle, which in turn was lashed to an iron ring bolted into the base of the chimney stack.

  Carla stooped to Estelle.

  ‘Estelle, do you know where we’re going?’

  Estelle pointed east and Carla’s stomach sank.

  Grymonde’s roof shortly gave way to a much steeper ridge which connected in turn to other such ridges of various heights and inclines, and with no more logic than the cracks on a broken plate. Generations of improvised building that shared more in common with the works of Nature than those of man. Carla felt a thin carpet of moss underfoot. It was soaked and slippery with rain.

  ‘Have you been this way before?’

  Estelle shook her head, unperturbed.

  ‘Then how do you know how to get down?’

  ‘There are always ways down from the roofs. Garrets, windows.’

  ‘You mean we break into a house.’

  Estelle shrugged as if this was obvious.

  Grymonde arrived. He took off his satchel and tied a knot in the strap to shorten it, and hung it around Estelle’s chest. It was heavy but the girl didn’t flinch.

  ‘I don’t think I can get across these roofs,’ said Carla.

  ‘Then I’ll carry you. Don’t worry. Papin!’

  Grymonde went to Papin and gave instructions. He pointed at the section of ship’s mast that propped the tower up against the adjoining roof. Papin nodded. Grymonde returned and drew a knife from his boot. He began to saw through the cable.

  ‘Stand back.’

  Carla and Estelle retreated. Severed fibres curled from the edge of the blade.

  ‘Now, Papin. Make me proud.’

  Papin stepped out and swung the sledge with all his might. The head smashed into the mast where it was fixed to the tower. Nails squealed and the mast shifted. The tower creaked. Grymonde grabbed the almost sawn rope and heaved backwards. Another creak as the pressure eased on the prop.

  ‘Again, Papin. One more for the Infant.’

  Papin swung the hammer and the mast shunted again but still held. Papin snarled and put his back into a third swing. The prop splintered free and fell. Grymonde let go of the cable and slashed through what was left with a stroke and covered his face with his arms as the rope snapped and whipped and the tower lurched towards the yard. He charged forward and thrust his fingers beneath the rising edge of the lower wall and sank to his heels. With a single heave of his haunches and back he powered himself upright and toppled his tower from the roof and into the yard.

  The crash and shatter of wood swamped the wider uproar.

  Grymonde looked back at Carla and grinned and she could see it in his eyes. His moment of triumphant destruction was too great to resist. She beckoned him.

  ‘Grymonde, let’s go.’

  Grymonde dashed to the edge like a child to see the result.

  Papin lunged from the dark and shoved.

  The head of the sledgehammer caught Grymonde in the back.

  Carla’s breath caught in her throat.

  Grymonde plunged from the roof without a sound and was gone.

  Papin stared over the edge, stunned by what he had done.

  Estelle bared her teeth and ran at Papin.

  Carla choked off the cry of caution that might have warned him.

  Papin sensed Estelle and turned. He raised the sledgehammer over his head. Estelle rammed the gun into his belly and fired. Papin screamed as ball and sledgehammer threw him back into the bloom of his own blood. He vanished into the yard.

  Carla turned and looked again across the wilderness of tiles.

  A faint mist hung above the moss.

  She did not lack the courage to try. It wasn’t a matter of fear; from that there was no escape. And though she might find the strength, she did not believe that her body had the agility to navigate the slimy ridges. Pursuit was cer
tain. Her progress would be slow and treacherous. She took two steps and felt the slime break apart and slither beneath her shoes. She didn’t think bare feet would be much safer. If she fell with Amparo in her arms; worse, if she dropped her –

  She swallowed on a surge of nausea.

  Had the fallen tower blocked the door, as she assumed had been Grymonde’s intention? How long would it take for strong men to drag away a pile of wood? Had they already got in? Would they dare the mossy tiles? And would they not patrol the streets below, looking for her? Was the convent of the Filles-Dieu not an obvious haven?

  Estelle came back. ‘Papin was the Judas.’

  ‘You were brave. Put the gun in the satchel.’

  Carla closed her eyes. She didn’t dare think what she thought.

  Amparo – her angel, her daughter’s angel – spoke from behind her.

  ‘Do it. I will go with them.’

  Carla took a deep breath. She had to be passionless. She had to act with the coldness, the boldness, of Mattias. If the Pilgrims had been recruited to save an abducted Catholic noblewoman, Christian couldn’t kill her here. She had to do it.

  She covered Amparo’s face with a flap of the shawl. She didn’t dare look at her. If she had, her nerve would have failed. She didn’t dare frame in her mind what she was going to do. If she had, she could not have done it. She kissed Amparo’s head through the fabric.

  ‘Tell me, Estelle, can you carry Amparo across the rooftops?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was neither doubt nor bravado in Estelle’s eyes.

  ‘You won’t fall?’

  ‘Of course I won’t fall.’

  ‘Will you take her to the convent for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any sisters?’

  ‘No. And no brothers.’

  ‘Neither do I. But we are sisters now.’

  ‘Me and Amparo and you?’

  ‘Yes. You and I and Amparo. And Alice, too. We four girls.’

  Estelle’s eyes filled and she started to cry. Carla took the hem of her gold frock and wiped Estelle’s cheeks. She realised she was crying, too.