Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  Estelle and her sister, Amparo, were going, too.

  And then they would all go home, together.

  She pulled on Grymonde’s ears. He laughed. He was brain-cracked.

  ‘La Rossa, now you are my wings and eyes both.’

  Estelle said, ‘Let’s fly.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Blackness

  HE COULD MANAGE without the eyes. In Paris after sundown, and in the Yards above all – and those hours had taken up a fair slice of his life – eyes weren’t much use anyway. Neither, given the stench, were nostrils, which was as well, for the only smell his own could detect was of his charred cavities. A sixth sense was what you needed in the Yards in the dark. His sixth sense had always been as sharp as a flesh fly’s, elsewise he’d have been dead long ago. Tonight it was blurred by pain. Not the pain of the wounds sustained in his fall from the roof. Those he couldn’t even feel. The burns. The pain of the burns had no focus: it shifted and warped from one instant to the next; it was never still; it was never one thing but many; it was never in one place but in many; it flickered and flared and whispered and blazed. It was everywhere, yet he couldn’t point to it, couldn’t draw a ring around it and set it aside, as he might have done with the hole in his leg. The fire pain surrounded his skull and everything in it, as if his head were sealed in a giant glass bottle filled with wasps. He could eat the pain as pain. Pain was life. But it galled him that he was more than merely blind. He needed another Immortal.

  He needed to play his part.

  His part, if nothing else, he could see, even through the pain. He pictured it in his mind. His mother’s draw came to him. No longer would he play the Hanged Man, a traitor to himself. No more would he play the pigeon plucked in the Juggler’s game. His part was now the Lunatic, his heels on the crumbling edge of the abyss; stranded at both the beginning and the end; knowing all and knowing nothing; with his staff and his rags and two pretty feathers in his hair. He did not need his senses. He needed only to be. And to walk on the paths that had heart.

  His big feet were a boon. He pounded each one down as if to stamp holes through the earth, slow and steady, waiting to feel the earth protest before committing his weight and pounding onward again. He paired each pace of his left foot with a stab into the dirt of the spear he held in his right hand. It felt natural. He would not fall.

  He carried on his shoulders, light as two wisps of fancy though they were – so light he could hardly feel their material weight – the two most precious spirits in Creation. One of them a Star to guide him; the other a Lunatic, too. A tiny Lunatic, she also teetering on the rim where end met beginning, knowing all worth knowing yet knowing nothing at all. Through the burning he felt the flutter of her brave new heart against the back of his head, while his own heart battered hugely into his ribs. How strange. How marvellous. To walk such paths as none had walked before. He felt a sharp tug on his right ear.

  ‘We’re turning south,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Into the jaws of the foeman. Good.’

  Grymonde stopped and turned on the spot. He would not fall. He set forth again, stomping and stabbing the earth. The dirt underfoot was more even here and sloped slightly downwards. They were out of the Yards and walking parallel to Saint-Denis. He felt for Estelle’s ankle dangling on his chest and gave it a squeeze.

  ‘How are my darlings?’

  ‘There are bodies on the ground up ahead. Huguenots. Tannzer is dragging them aside for us. Grégoire! Lend Grymonde your shoulder while we pass.’

  Grymonde felt her slap his left arm and he let go of her ankle and reached out. A hand took his, stronger than he might have guessed, and he placed his palm on a thin shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, lad.’

  Grymonde stomped on. He held the spear vertical, out to one side, for fear of stabbing the boy. He detected a heat, a glow. It was faint, so he supposed, but his burns felt it and writhed.

  ‘Grégoire, is that a lantern you carry?’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘Sire?’ Grymonde felt a laugh bubble through him. ‘Be ye as wise as serpents. Tell me, lad, is it the virtuous man you seek with your lamp? Even on this Devil’s highway?’

  Grégoire stopped. Grymonde almost knocked him down. He held him upright.

  ‘Tannhauser’sfightingupahead.’

  The lad garbled through his nose. Grymonde heard a doleful cry.

  ‘Tannzer shot a man,’ said Estelle. ‘Now he’s running. He’s stabbed a second man.’

  ‘Guide me to his side.’

  ‘No. We are your eyes and wings. We’ll tell you when it’s time to breathe fire. Anyway, he’s killed all three.’

  ‘Three?’ Helplessness and envy scourged him.

  ‘They were robbing bodies. Tannzer’s dragging them. Now we can go on.’

  ‘Tannzer!’ called Grymonde. ‘Another Immortal, man. Or let me fight.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ Estelle slapped him on the head. ‘Do as you’re told.’

  His feet splashed through pools of what must have been fresh blood. He ground his teeth. He hadn’t been the one to spill it. The clenching scalded his blisters. He blinked, but couldn’t, for he had no eyelids; a peculiar sensation. He started as Tannzer spoke close by. Even weighted with gear the man moved like a leopard.

  ‘A murder gang is emptying a house, half a furlong hence.’

  ‘Take these cherubs from my shoulders and let’s have at them.’

  Fingers hard as oak clasped his arm. Grymonde wasn’t used to feeling comforted; the very notion was long lost to his memory; yet comforted he was.

  ‘Killing them’s no exploit, but there’s enough that some might run and raise the alarum. Les Halles is full of sergents. I propose to cross Saint-Denis. Is there a spot from which we can size up the Hôtel Le Tellier without being seen?’

  Grymonde shoved at the agony clouding his thoughts, like a man pushing mist, and tried to picture the hôtel and its surroundings. He heard a stream of gibberish from the boy.

  ‘A stockyard, says Grégoire.’

  ‘He’s right. Back of Crucé’s abattoir.’ Grymonde saw it. ‘It should be empty until they open the city gate. A drover or two at most, who’ll go and get drunk for pennies.’

  The hand let go and he missed it, and felt foolish. Estelle kicked his chest with both heels and he stumped on. He felt the oaken fingers again. They pressed a small, soft globe into his palm. He clenched his fist on an Immortal. He bridled at the suggestion he was less than stout.

  ‘I can get by without it.’

  ‘As you will, but you’re twitching like a madman’s puppet.’

  ‘I’ll not be addled for the fight?’

  ‘You’re addled with the pain. The pain and the opium will abate each other, like bitter and sweet. But you may have visions, so Estelle, you keep him sharp.’

  Grymonde threw the Immortal down his gullet. His tongue turned as bitter as repentance but he liked it, because it was bitter, and because the prospect of visions was sweet.

  They crossed the Rue Saint-Denis without incident and made their way south through the narrower streets. The odd gunshot cracked in the distance, east and west, but no volleys. Another murder gang prompted a second detour. Grymonde did not fall.

  The obstacle they couldn’t avoid was the profusion of Huguenot corpses that littered their way. The spoor of hate, of greed, of stupidity and power. He had played his part in that, too. It shamed him. He had not killed for religion, for his own had neither name nor priesthood. But what difference was that to the slain? He remembered the nameless girl, ruined among the ruins of her family. He had spared her. He remembered his own words to Tannzer: spared her what?

  He heard Tannzer question Estelle on the events of her day. He half-listened, his mind drifting. He heard Typhaine’s name, and flinched at the memory of the expression on her face when she had mocked him as Samson and suggested they blind him. The intensity of her hatred baffled him, but he had lived with it too long to wonder. As to
the blinding, he had taken money to cut a woman’s tits off, and many a time had cheered with the crowd at the disembowellings on the Place de Grève. He heard ‘Petit Christian’.

  ‘That green turd is mine,’ he said. ‘I claim him.’

  Estelle slapped him on the head.

  ‘Stop here,’ she said. ‘And be quiet.’

  ‘Chevalier? Where are you? Will you let me have him?’

  He felt the flat of a large hand against his chest and stopped.

  ‘If I can, I will. But patience, my Infant. Pay heed to Estelle or you’ll fall.’

  ‘Did you hear him?’ said Estelle. She was cross. ‘Pay heed to me.’

  ‘I will, my darling, I will, I’m sorry.’

  Grymonde waited while bodies were cleared from his path, but the real obstacle was the fact he had no eyes. A distance that, just that afternoon, he had strolled in ten minutes seemed to take hours. If he had murdered Carla that morning, or had left it to Papin and Bigot, he would still have his eyes, and Cockaigne would not be razed, and his mother Alice and many more would be eating roast pork by the moonlight. Aye, and the wren would not be flying on his back and he would never have felt her heart beat, and La Rossa would have no sister to defend, and he himself would have lived and died without ever finding the courage to admit to love.

  How strange. How marvellous.

  He wanted to cry, but he had no eyes to cry with.

  He heeded Estelle and stumped on.

  He saw his mother’s face; purpled and worn; a vision beyond the dreaming of the seers of old; and in that face a woman who had had no equal, until she had anointed Carla her sister. Yes, he had listened outside the birthing room door. He had never taken Alice’s counsel, though he’d listened to her every word and had never doubted its wisdom. He had never once told her that he loved her. Rather, he had brought her gifts, which she had scorned because they were stolen. And he had brought her more, and she had scorned those too, down to the meat and drink he had heaped on her table. Every mouthful she had ever swallowed, she had purchased with her own small earnings.

  The one piece of his mother’s counsel he had taken, without her ever having given it, was to spare Carla’s life and bring her home. And yet, that counsel, too, she had given all his life, had whispered to him in her womb, had fed to him with her blood before he was born. Yes, he had listened outside the birthing room door. He had heard the secret that those four sisters shared, even if he could not put it into words.

  How marvellous. How strange.

  In his vision, Alice was smiling.

  And other potent cards were in play.

  Judgement. Fire. Death.

  Their images rose a hundred feet tall, and painted in a hundred colours, before his eyeless gaze. The silver clarions of Armageddon. The burning, bleeding Tower. The pale and delirious horseman on his black and delirious horse.

  He squeezed the lad’s shoulder. The lad yelled and wriggled free.

  Grymonde stopped and leaned on his spear and gaped up at the images.

  Carla had chosen Anima Mundi.

  And the Soul of the World had guided her hand towards that implacable draw.

  And such were the cards now in play.

  Death rode rampant.

  He charged towards the Fire.

  And beyond the Fire, the Judgement.

  Grymonde soared in the grip of the talons of ecstasy.

  A tide of fear watered his bowels.

  Perhaps he would not die.

  Perhaps Death would not reach him through the Fire.

  Was that his Judgement? And his sentence?

  To live? Like this?

  ‘Where are you, lad?’

  He sensed feathery blows on his head and the voices of cherubim. Sounds, as of a drum, echoed in his chest. His hand was seized and his palm was placed on a bone and he squeezed. He heard a yell but the bone didn’t move. Good bone. Brave bone. The strange and marvellous boy. Grymonde relaxed his grip. His bowels steadied. His feet steadied.

  The talons carried him higher.

  In the images, Grymonde saw the Many Faces of God.

  The Soul of the World. The Judgement. The Fire. Death.

  Carla. La Rossa. The Wren. Alice. Alice?

  God was not there. God was here.

  And God was not God.

  No gods here. Only Our Mother, the Earth. And us.

  Agony wiped his revelation clean in a white flame. Scoured it. The vision, the images, the knowing. Gone. He gazed upon blackness and less than that. The agony waned.

  ‘I said pay heed,’ said Tannzer. ‘Keep sharp.’

  Grymonde had felt no force, short of, he now realised, the blows of La Rossa’s hands and heels. Tannzer had stroked his burns. The oak hand grabbed his arm.

  ‘We’re close. Stay sturdy. I need the mighty Infant.’

  ‘The Infant is sturdy. Guide him unto the battle.’

  ‘Bold but sly. Favour the visions without, over the visions within.’

  Grymonde tried to blink. A white flame steadied him. He nodded.

  ‘Estelle, Grégoire,’ said Tannzer, ‘you did good work.’

  ‘Amparo, too,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Aye, Amparo, too.’

  The less than blackness returned and Grymonde held onto it. Golden lights flashed like shooting stars and he let them fall. He stumped on. Sturdy. Bold but sly. Tannzer? Tannzer. Yes, La Rossa was right. The sound of it cut to the bone, as did the man.

  He loved the man.

  Grymonde leaned on Grégoire’s shoulder. Grégoire stopped and so did he, without collision. Visions within. Visions without. Yes. Without, Grymonde sensed Tannzer stacking the slain with the passionless phlegm of a man who had stacked them before, in number well beyond reckoning. Tannzer’s blood was colder than any Grymonde had ever heard tell of; yet a limitless passion drove him. And that knowing was no vision from within. Tannzer sought Carla. He had found the babe that they two had made. He had found the wren in a place that was designed to be unfindable, a place no one man had ever even dared to seek. He would gamble all, even wife and babe, to bring they three together, be they living or dead. And this, at least, was not strange.

  Not strange at all. It was right. It was true.

  It was marvellous.

  Yes.

  He loved the man.

  He loved them all.

  Enough of the marvels within.

  Grymonde raised his hand and stuck his finger in the hole where his left eye had been. The finger pierced his entire skull like a hot nail. He seized on the scream he wanted to loose and strangled it into an elongated grunt. He was alive. He was without. He was needed. They moved on. He would serve Carla. He would serve the sisters on his back. He had never served a man in his life, and would have cut his own throat before doing so. But he would serve Tannzer. No. A man among men had the right to call his own name.

  Grymonde, the mighty Infant, would serve Mattias Tannhauser.

  Yet why did Tannhauser need his service? Grymonde was a fistful of stones in the man’s boots. La Rossa could have carried the wren by herself at five times the speed. No. He was going within again. He poked himself in the hole where there was no eye. The interior of his skull was drenched in blue flame. He grunted. He swayed. He stumped. With his grunting and stumping he served, for he knew not what else he could offer.

  A smell distilled from decades of manure, shat from the guts of cattle which sensed their doom, fought its way through the liquid charcoal dribbling down his nose.

  ‘Hoi! You lot! Be off with you! Or I’ll call the watch!’

  Grymonde turned his head towards the voice. The voice choked on terror.

  ‘God’s blood.’

  The man made no sound more but for that of his corpse hitting the shit.

  Tannhauser had paid him in steel rather than coppers.

  ‘Wait here, my Infant, and keep quiet.’

  Grymonde waited. He felt a deep patience. Alice had said there was no hurry, and she had been right
. She had seen her end coming and had spent her last moments on love instead of fear. The woman had always had an eye for a good bargain. Could he do the same? He was amazed to find he had love to spend in plenty. Where had it been stored all these years? In what lost vault had he hidden it? Sadness rose inside him. He wanted to cry again, and was glad that he couldn’t. Pay heed. Keep sharp. He had rage to spend, too. He’d never had trouble finding that. But he had not time enough for both. This bargain wasn’t so easy to call. He felt Tannhauser’s hand.

  ‘Garnier just left the hôtel with four of his men. A sergent guards the door.’

  ‘What next?’

  ‘I’m going to lift Estelle from your shoulders. Estelle, don’t kick him in the face.’

  The wisps flew away. Grymonde missed them. He was alone. He felt a wave of self-pity. He raised his finger to his eyehole to right himself, but Tannhauser’s hand seized his wrist. Grymonde was comforted. Tannhauser’s voice was calm, strong, as if hoping to make himself clear to such as a child.

  ‘Grymonde, I am going to put the stock of the crossbow in your left hand. Your left hand only. You will take the weight, but lightly so, in order that the crossbow may turn, and that the strength of your hand may follow it. The weapon is not yet armed. You must not touch the tiller or the trigger. I am going to show Estelle how to aim it and shoot it, from your hand. The weight is yours, but the aim, and the decision, is hers. If she shoots, you will draw the sinew, that she may shoot again. In this, she will be your mistress. Are you with me, my Infant?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m with you.’

  Grymonde had thought himself mad; as such had prided himself. Yet with madness such as this he might have ruled Paris.

  ‘But where is La Rossa?’

  ‘I’m with you, Tannzer,’ said Estelle. ‘Amparo is with you, too.’

  ‘I know you are,’ said Tannhauser. ‘You shot Papin. You carried your sister from the tiles. You saved her from the nuns. You united her with me. You flew the blinded dragon. There is no one I trust more, girl, and only Grégoire do I trust as much.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ said La Rossa.