Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  ‘Wait for me.’

  She turned. Juste hadn’t moved.

  She went to the corridor and yelled down.

  ‘Irène? Where’s our food?’

  Irène appeared with a flour sack, about a quarter full. Tannhauser had paid her well. There wasn’t time to argue. Pascale held out her hand for the sack. Irène climbed the stairs. She saw blood trickling down and stopped. She looked at Pascale with hatred. Pascale splashed down the steps. Irène flinched as drops flew into her cheek. She held out the sack. Pascale didn’t take it.

  ‘Tannhauser will be back. If you tell anyone about us, he will know and he will kill them, and then he will kill you. I’d kill you, only I don’t know if he would.’

  Irène still hated her; but she was scared, too. Pascale took the sack.

  ‘Go back downstairs until he gets here. Tell him we’ll wait for him.’

  ‘Where?’ said Irène.

  ‘He’ll know.’

  Pascale returned to the bedroom and dropped the sack through the window.

  Juste had covered Flore with the sheet up to her chin. He still held her hand.

  ‘Juste, let’s go. They came to kill us all.’

  ‘I know. I was wrong.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean they only got one of us, instead of all five.’

  ‘I’m staying here, with Flore.’

  ‘Others might come. We don’t know.’

  ‘I hope they do.’

  ‘I love Flore, too.’ Pascale almost said more than you do. ‘She was better than me. Just as Papa was better than Tannhauser. Flore and Papa are dead. You’re better than me, too. But I need you, so you mustn’t die.’

  ‘I was meant to die last night, in the Louvre.’

  ‘You didn’t. Flore was meant to die this morning. She didn’t. And in all this –’

  Pascale wanted to cry and decided that she wouldn’t.

  ‘In all this you fell in love and so did she.’

  Juste choked. He turned away.

  ‘Come with me, Juste. Tannhauser will find us. He won’t give up. But until he does, I need you. The Mice need you. Your Mice.’

  She took the cap from the dead sergent’s head and dipped it in his blood. Papa had taught her how to print in black; Tannhauser in red. She went back into the bedroom.

  She painted a word on the wall: MICE.

  She went to the window. She saw militia on the far bank peering towards her in the failing light. They must have heard the rifle shot. She put one leg over the sill and then the other. She twisted around onto her belly, weight on her elbows. She could have made the drop. But if Juste would let go of Flore, perhaps he could leave her.

  ‘Juste, I hurt my hand. Help me get down.’

  She waited.

  Juste bent over and kissed Flore. He covered her face. He walked away.

  He took Pascale’s hands and lowered her and let go. She landed safely. She retrieved the rifle and holsters. Juste jumped down. He took the sack and saddle wallets.

  They joined Agnès and Marie.

  They ducked low and headed east along the river bank.

  Pascale stopped in the lee of the second barge, where the militia on the Place de Grève couldn’t see them. It was stacked with sacks of charcoal from the forests upstream. She gave the rifle to Juste and rummaged in the wallets for powder flask and ball.

  ‘Can you reload it?’ she asked.

  Juste nodded. He was deep in melancholy and seemed glad to have a task.

  ‘The pistol, too?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t fire it. Are you hurt?’

  Juste rolled one shoulder and shook his head.

  Pascale sat on the gunwale and covered her face with her hands to think.

  Tannhauser would come back to Irène’s. He would find Flore. He would see the message. He would see all that had happened and how. He would follow. He would try to think as she, Pascale, thought. And if he saw what had happened, he would know that she was thinking like him. The rifle was a burden. She had to leave it. The pistols, the opium, the gold, she would take. They would go to Tybaut’s. Tannhauser would read the message. No one else would understand it. He would find them there; wherever it was.

  She pulled Agnès and Marie close.

  ‘Can we share your room with you? At Tybaut’s?’

  Agnès and Marie looked at each other, as if they found the idea odd.

  ‘Yes. If you like.’

  Pascale took the rifle and stowed it between the gunwale and the sacks of charcoal. The other barge was clean, but the filth hid it better.

  ‘We’ll hide in the Terrain until the moon is up.’

  ‘What’s the Terrain?’ asked Juste.

  ‘Cathedral land. Fields, orchards. It’s close.’ Pascale turned to the Mice. ‘Do you know any secret ways home? By the alleys?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Mice exchanged another puzzled glance. They looked at Pascale.

  ‘But we have Tybaut’s key,’ said Agnès.

  ‘Good,’ said Pascale.

  She reckoned it dark enough to move. She slung the holsters over one shoulder and the sack with their meagre provisions over the other.

  ‘What if he doesn’t find us?’ said Juste.

  ‘Then we’ll be on our own,’ said Pascale, ‘which is what we already are.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Sisters

  ESTELLE LIKED THE roofs. They were a lot cleaner than the street and she didn’t meet any people up there. Sometimes other children who could be mean, especially boys, but usually she saw them first, and if she didn’t she was usually faster than they were. Or meaner. One time some boys held her over the edge by her ankles, just to make her scream, but she didn’t scream, and they didn’t drop her. She knew one of those boys and she had told Grymonde what he had done. The next time she saw the boy, he had no ears.

  When she thought about Grymonde falling from the roof, she wanted to cry, but she had to look after her new sister, Amparo, and if she cried as hard as she wanted to, she wouldn’t be able to keep hold of her, so she didn’t.

  Amparo seemed to like the roofs, too. Her little eyes were open, looking at the stars, and looking at Estelle. Amparo didn’t cry, either. She hadn’t seen Grymonde fall, too, and didn’t understand what was happening, but it helped Estelle not to. Estelle wondered if they should stay on the roofs all night; there were plenty of nooks up here; but she’d promised Carla. At least, she’d said yes, which was a kind of promise. People broke promises all the time, every day, every hour. Promises were a way to get you to believe a lie. Estelle didn’t want to break her promise, because she didn’t think Carla would break a promise to her, unless she couldn’t help it. Even so Estelle didn’t really want to keep it either.

  She didn’t like nuns.

  She found herself a long way from Cockaigne. She found two doors that were locked; then a hatch that was propped open to the air. She peered inside. She heard sniffs and scratches, and saw dark shapes lumped on pallets. Some of the shapes were big enough to be grown-ups and one of them murmured in his sleep. She moved on and found a third door with latch. She opened it and crept down a pitch-dark stair. Every few steps she stopped and listened for anyone coming up from below. All she heard were sounds from the rooms she passed. Down and down they went. On what she hoped was the last flight she stopped as the sole of her foot touched something soft.

  She pulled her foot back and listened and heard breathing. She stared down into the dark until a darker shape emerged. Someone asleep, she hoped drunk with wine. She went back up the stair to a small window on the landing. She felt under the sill and found a nook where the slop bucket was stored. The bucket felt empty. She took the bucket halfway up the next stair and left it on a step. She crouched down in the empty nook. She couldn’t squeeze all the way in, but far enough. In the dark, he would go right past her, and trip on the bucket. She pulled out her knife and held tight to Amparo.

  Estelle crept back down the stair and stabbe
d the sleeper, in a lump that looked like a shoulder, and darted back for the nook.

  She stopped as the sleeper didn’t move or make a sound. She couldn’t have killed him; it wasn’t a deep stab. Maybe he was trying to trick her, but it was hard to ignore a stab, just to trick someone. She went back down and poked him with her foot, and he grunted but still didn’t wake up. A lot of wine. Estelle climbed over him, leaning on the rail, and skipped to the front door.

  After the stairwell the alley seemed almost light. She wasn’t sure where she was. To the left was a real street, which was even less dark. She ran to it and peered around the corner. She was on the edge of the Yards, on the slope of the hill. Below she could see the square tower of Saint-Saveur. The convent of the Filles-Dieu was even closer. The strap of the heavy satchel cut into her shoulder. She climbed a low stone wall and sat behind it and took off the satchel and cradled Amparo and looked at her face in the shadows.

  ‘Amparo? You were very brave.’

  Estelle unbuttoned the top of her chemise. Her chest was as flat as a boy’s but the rats sometimes suckled her and maybe Amparo would like to. She put the baby’s mouth to her nipple. Amparo sucked it at once and she seemed to like it. Estelle liked it. She loved her new sister more than anything in the world. More even than Grymonde, especially now that he was dead. She cried for a while. She couldn’t lose the dragon and her sister, not all at once. Keeping Amparo didn’t feel wrong. It felt right. So there had to be a reason.

  ‘You don’t want to live with the nuns, do you?’ said Estelle. ‘I wouldn’t. They all wear the same clothes and you can never trust people who do that. It means they’ll do what they’re told, even if they’re told to do something bad.’

  Amparo took her mouth from the nipple and cooed and this seemed answer enough. Estelle was sure Carla would understand. She wondered what Petit Christian would do to Carla. He was nasty and did things for people who were even nastier, and they had a lot of men. Carla had sent an angel with them, with her and Amparo. Perhaps Carla should have kept the Angel with her. Estelle wondered if the Angel had made the sleeper stay asleep. She wondered what the Angel was called. Perhaps Angels didn’t have names.

  Estelle whispered.

  ‘Are you there?’

  She felt a shiver. A warm shiver. The Angel was there. She felt better.

  ‘What shall we do?’

  She listened very carefully. She heard distant voices, the kind of shouts and screams she had heard all day, but nothing nearby.

  ‘Can you talk? Or do you just watch over us?’

  ‘Tannzer,’ said the Angel.

  Estelle turned. She didn’t know if she had heard it inside her or outside, in her ears. A thin ray of moonlight gleamed down from above the Yards. It shimmered.

  ‘You mean Tannzer the chevalier?’

  She felt like the Angel nodded, though she could only see the shimmer.

  ‘Carla said Tannzer would come to Cockaigne. Will he?’

  ‘He’ll come,’ said the Angel.

  Estelle lifted Amparo and kissed her on the head. She put the satchel back on, this time on the other shoulder. She stood up and looked over the wall. She saw and heard no one. She smiled at Amparo. She kissed her again.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, the Angel is with us. We’re not going to the nuns. We’re going to find Tannzer. He’s your papa.’

  First she saw the burning torches, then the soldiers, then the carts.

  The soldiers were pleased with themselves, Estelle could tell. They had flags and wore red and white ribbons. They thought they were right. They thought they were good. They thought they had done something good. They thought they were better than her, and the people of the Yards, and Grymonde. Maybe they were better. Everyone and everything said so. She knew she wasn’t better than anything, even than rats. But if the soldiers were better, better wasn’t something she wanted to be. Typhaine, her Mama, wanted to be better, and she blamed Estelle because she wasn’t. Estelle’s head hurt. She stopped thinking about it.

  One of the passing carts was stacked with dead soldiers, and she was glad about that, too. In the second cart were wounded men. In the last cart was Carla.

  Carla looked very poorly. Her head was down, as if she was asleep, but she wasn’t asleep. Perhaps she was crying, though she didn’t think Carla would let the soldiers see her cry. She had hated Carla, for a while, and she shouldn’t have done, but Carla didn’t seem to mind. Carla was better than anyone she’d ever met, except Alice. Carla and Alice didn’t care who was better. They said Estelle was one of us. But who was us? It wasn’t most of the people Estelle knew. Even though Estelle loved her, Typhaine wasn’t one of us. In a strange way, she didn’t think even Grymonde was one of us. Estelle didn’t know why she herself was one of us, but she was, Alice had said so; and in some ways, that was even better than flying with the dragon.

  The dragon was dead. She didn’t want to think about that.

  She rocked Amparo against her breast and whispered.

  ‘Don’t fret, Amparo. We’re one of us.’

  She saw that Carla had her arm around the same little girl she had brought with her that morning. But the little girl wasn’t one of us, and Carla was, so Estelle didn’t mind. Carla was kind, that’s why she cared for the little girl. It wasn’t the same. Somehow, being kind made Carla stronger; it had made Alice strong too. Was Estelle just being kind to Amparo? It didn’t feel that way, because Amparo was her sister, and Amparo was one of us, and the Angel was, too, she was sure of it.

  Estelle saw Petit Christian and wished someone had killed him. She wished she had killed him herself, like Papin. Petit Christian wasn’t just better, he was evil. She hid in the dark and rocked Amparo and hummed to her until all the soldiers had passed by. The carts turned south into the Rue Saint-Denis and Carla disappeared.

  Estelle hurried through the alleys to Cockaigne.

  When she poked her head around the corner she saw the fire pit and the braziers, and the shadows of people moving about in the smoky yellow light. Bodies lay on the ground. She heard women crying. She saw boys and dogs.

  She saw two big men sitting on chairs.

  The one facing her was bare to the waist and he had long hair. His skin shone in strange patterns in the glow of the pit and he had dark pictures carved on his arms, like Altan. His body was splashed with blood. That was why the patterns were strange.

  It was Tannzer. She didn’t know why she knew it. She just did.

  Tannzer talked and listened while he sharpened a huge spear.

  Estelle was frightened of him. He was sharpening the spear because he had blunted it with killing and because he was going to kill more. He sat on the chair as if he was the king, not just of Cockaigne, but of anywhere he might be. And not like a king, because she knew he didn’t care about Cockaigne or anywhere else. He made her think of Alice, but she didn’t know why.

  Tannzer had an angel, too, but it wasn’t like theirs. It didn’t shimmer by the light of the moon but by the red coals of the fire. Tannzer’s angel had black wings. She wondered how he could be the father of Amparo. But how could Alice be the mother of Grymonde? Estelle didn’t know who her father was; but lots of girls didn’t. Did Tannzer have a father? And a mother? Sisters were easier to understand.

  She turned Amparo to face Tannzer.

  ‘Look, Amparo, that’s Tannzer. Don’t be afraid of him. He’s your papa.’

  She thought Amparo might cry, but she didn’t. She cooed. Estelle wondered what their angel thought of Tannzer, and Tannzer’s angel. Tannzer put the spear down and drank from a beaker. The second big man shifted in his chair and waved an arm. Estelle stepped out so that the second man was outlined against the glow. He scratched his head. She knew that head. She knew the feel of the strange ridges beneath its curly hair. No one else had shoulders like that. She had flown all over Paris on those shoulders.

  ‘Grymonde? Grymonde!’

  Grymonde stood up and turned around and opened his arms and smile
d.

  Tannzer tried to stop him, she didn’t know why.

  She saw Grymonde’s face. His smile.

  He had no eyes.

  Instead of eyes, he had big white dark gaping holes.

  Grymonde stroked her hair and held her to his chest and said sweet things in his great rumbling voice, but his words she didn’t hear. She smelled his strange smell, the only smell she liked. Amparo cried in the gap between their bodies and Estelle cried, too.

  They two sisters cried together, for the chestnut-brown eyes that once had had a light inside them brighter than the sun and fiercer than fire and richer than gold and softer than down. How could such eyes be gone and not be somewhere else? Had the soldiers taken the eyes away with them? Could they be put back? No. Estelle knew no one could do that, except God; and God wouldn’t. The white dark holes would never be filled again.

  Not even with tears.

  No eyes had ever looked at her the way the brown eyes had. When the brown eyes looked at her she felt like the only girl alive. The brown eyes made her feel like the world, and all the rotten things in it, were gone, and that all that mattered was her, and that she was good. The brown eyes made her feel the way she had felt when Alice put her arms around her and Amparo and Carla. So Grymonde must be one of us after all. He had his arms around her, and Amparo, the sisters who cried for his eyes. One of his hands covered her head like a bonnet made out of gentleness, and the other covered her back like a coat made of love. She loved being covered. But she wanted the eyes to be back in the holes.

  Amparo stopped crying and so Estelle stopped, too.

  They were sisters.

  Estelle turned her head to breathe.

  She saw Tannzer watching her.

  His eyes were shrouded in shadows, but she knew they weren’t brown. Even though they were shadowed, they were hard as jewels. And yet they were sad. Grymonde’s gone brown eyes had never seen anything but her. But Tannzer’s eyes saw everything. They saw her. They saw Grymonde. They saw Amparo. They saw people, and things, and happenings, that weren’t even here. Things that had been. Things that would be. Things that might have been, but never would. Perhaps that was why he was so sad.