Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  In his hand he clutched Tannhauser’s sword.

  Tannhauser ran towards him.

  ‘Juste stop. Go back. Back.’

  Juste climbed the stern thwart, to cross onto the bow of the second lighter. His good arm waved the sword for balance as he teetered on the swell. On this side of the chain the rim of the bow gleamed with fresh gore. The boy’s shoes were slathered in the same, and his front foot skidded in more as it landed. The arm of his pierced shoulder flapped in its improvised sling. Uninjured, he might have regained his poise, but the pain twisted his body into an ungainly pirouette.

  Juste fell into the river downstream of the boom and vanished.

  Tannhauser reached the spot in two strides and dropped the halberd and bent double over the gunwale. Altan’s bowstring cut into his neck. The hilt of his sword appeared above the waters and he lunged and grabbed it by the sheathed blade with his left hand and pulled. Juste’s arm surfaced, his head and shoulders. He heaved for air. His hand slid six inches down the sheath as the current sucked him. With all the desperation of his own heart Tannhauser shouted in his face.

  ‘Squeeze, boy. Hold tight.’

  He felt a tremor run along the hull as the Pilgrims jumped in. Footfalls echoed as they charged. He grabbed the hilt and shouted again.

  ‘I’m going to draw the sword. Hold tight to the sheath, like a rope.’

  The soft leather, if anything, would give them both an easier grip. He drew and Juste held on and Tannhauser glanced back across his shoulder, his weapon concealed, his perceptions racing faster than his thoughts.

  The first Pilgrim wielded a sword above his head as he stumbled over the bodies. Behind him, a pikeman, the spear point extended two feet ahead of the man in front and to the latter’s right. A good formation; compared to his own, a masterpiece. To ward the pike sideways with strength alone, if it could be done, would knock the shaft against the body of the front man, and alter its aim but little.

  He slashed backhand, over the spear point that lunged for his ribs; in the same instant he snapped his leg up, a fraction behind his arm, and kicked the pike shaft upwards with the side of his foot. The pike passed an inch above his head. His sword carved the front man upwards through the armpit and shattered the collarbone from below. With the muscles of his chest and back severed from his arm, the man reeled sideways, his sword falling to the hull from his nerveless hand. The stroke left Tannhauser canted sideways with both arms wide as the pikeman fell on him. The weight smashed him against the gunwale and the brute changed grip and rammed the pike shaft broadside at Tannhauser’s throat.

  Tannhauser ducked his head beneath the shaft and caught a blow across the top of the skull. He tugged on the sheath to affirm Juste’s weight and shoved his head up between the pikeman’s arms and sank his teeth into his lower lip. He closed his eyes as the pikeman screamed and phlegm sprayed his cheek. He tasted blood and beard and foul breath. He pulled his sword in hard, underhand, and felt the edge bite a thigh and sawed in fast, short strokes. The muscles parted and he canted the angle and carved down and felt a thick fillet peel away from the bone. The screaming in his face became frenzied. He felt the shaft wedged across his shoulder blades fall and hands grabbed for his throat, and he bit harder and shook his head and the hands pulled away and so did the face as the lip tore away. He pulled the sword from the spurting flap of thigh and as the pikeman squirmed away along the gunwale, Tannhauser spat out the lip and stabbed him deep through the gut above the hip bone. All this in seconds and small pieces of seconds, Juste’s weight still tugging on his left hand, then the third man was on him, sword raised.

  As Tannhauser chose his stroke, the spontone embossed the swordsman through the belly to its wings and Pascale screamed at him to die as she sprang across the gap in the boom. She pulled as he fell and stood over him and lanced him again, twice, her shoulders heaving. She looked at Tannhauser. He saw no further foes in the boats. He met Pascale’s eyes and gave her his blessing and nodded at the swordsman he had crippled. The swordsman saw the gesture and tried to stagger away. Pascale lanced him through the back below the right ribs and he bawled and fell and whimpered in the pooled gore and Pascale stabbed him again in the neck.

  Tannhauser propped his sword and leaned over the gunwale.

  Juste was all but spent, and with more than merely blood loss and exhaustion. His face was indistinct in the dark. He seemed to be staring at the Louvre, where his journey into the degeneracy of mankind had begun. His hand was two feet beyond Tannhauser’s reach, his body bobbing at the length of his arm, as fragile a thread as any a life might hang from.

  ‘Juste.’

  Juste looked up at him. He spat water. His eyes were clear.

  ‘I can see the cage,’ he said. ‘The place of dead monkeys.’

  ‘I’m going to pull you closer and grab your wrist. Just hold on. I’ll do the rest.’

  ‘My brothers are over there, too. I saw them, with the pigs and the dogs.’

  ‘Squeeze tight. Nice and steady, now.’

  Tannhauser started to pull the sheath in, hand over hand. He didn’t dare rush for fear of plucking the leather from the boy’s grip.

  Juste said, ‘I feel like going home.’

  ‘We’ll get you home, lad. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried. I’m tired.’

  Juste drew his knees up close to the hull. He smiled a strange smile.

  ‘I’ve seen Flore,’ he said. ‘She’s waiting for me.’

  Tannhauser lunged at full stretch.

  Juste let go of the sheath and shoved his feet into the hull.

  Tannhauser missed the hand as Juste snatched it away.

  ‘Tell Grégoire I will miss him.’

  Pascale let out a cry of absolute sorrow.

  Tannhauser clenched his jaws.

  Juste floated away downstream on his back, still facing them.

  Pascale dropped the spontone and sat on the gunwale and swung her legs over the side. Tannhauser threw an arm around her waist and pulled her to his chest.

  She sobbed. She screamed at him through her tears.

  ‘If you won’t go after him, let me go.’

  Tannhauser had learned to swim since the time he had almost drowned in Malta, but he wasn’t swimmer enough, in the gear that he was wearing, to save Juste. It wasn’t a risk he had the expertise to take. Nor would he risk Pascale, whatever her skill.

  ‘Juste’s moment has come,’ he said. ‘He’s taken it. Let him go home.’

  Juste was still afloat, twenty feet distant and drifting at a yard a second.

  ‘Why did he bring me my sword?’ asked Tannhauser.

  Pascale said, ‘He said he’d heard you call for it.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Pascale twisted her head to look at him.

  ‘You said my spear might snap like the blade of a sword.’

  Tannhauser nodded. So. He had killed all four brothers.

  He might as well show some gratitude for Juste’s valour.

  He raised the sword high in salute.

  Juste’s arm rose in reply.

  ‘Juste!’ cried Pascale.

  Juste slid beneath the Seine and was gone.

  Tannhauser set the sword down and lifted Pascale in both arms.

  ‘He loved us,’ she said. ‘He loved you.’

  Her eyes were painted in infinite shades of pain.

  Tannhauser let the pain penetrate him. Pascale blinked.

  He leaned his face close to hers.

  ‘You and I have crossed the bridge but not the boom. Be strong.’

  Pascale turned away and looked at the water. She nodded.

  Tannhauser carried her to the bow and leaned over the chain and set her down in the stern of the third lighter. He heard a groan. Grymonde had thrown a leg over the side and with an effort that should have been beyond him he hoisted himself up and fell in. He landed in the hull with a roar of pain and a billow of pitch smoke.

  Tannhauser was glad to see
him; they could do without a dying giant in the skiff. Grymonde had concluded the same. Tannhauser picked up the spontone and passed it to Pascale. He sheathed the sword and reattached it to his belt. He recovered the halberd and checked the jetty. The causeway was empty but for the dead. The Pilgrims voiced their outrage at a safe distance. Garnier stood paralysed by the burden of command.

  Tannhauser suppressed the itch to shoot the windbag. To the others it might be a provocation too far, and he owed it to Carla to be gone. He climbed back into the third lighter. It wasn’t ten minutes since he had left it. It seemed longer. By the length of a life no more to be lived. He put Juste from his mind.

  He rolled Grymonde onto his belly amid charred flesh and canvas, and dragged him to his knees, and thence to his feet. The Infant couldn’t be bleeding fast enough to die, but his entrails were dissolving inside him. He clenched his jaws against a spasm.

  ‘So you’re not leaving Paris,’ said Tannhauser.

  The blinded holes glowered.

  ‘I’ve never left Paris in my life. Why would I want to?’

  Tannhauser took the spontone from Pascale. He put it in Grymonde’s fist.

  ‘Good. You can guard the Devil’s causeway.’

  Grymonde leaned on the shaft.

  ‘May it please God they try to take it before I go.’

  Tannhauser stepped past him and looked down into the skiff. It was held firm to the boom by a boathook anchored by Agnès and Marie. Grégoire lay unconscious. Estelle sat with Amparo in her shirt. Carla held the rudder hard to larboard. She knew Juste was gone. He could see that she felt responsible; but the claimants for that honour stretched all the way back to Krakow. He mustered a smile.

  ‘We’re on our way, love. Be ready for the boom to shift.’

  He sized up the cleat again and set himself to swing the halberd. The chain had shifted an inch or two and the field was clearer. He sank the axe into the wood and felt the blade strike the bolt. He levered, slowly, and the splinter gave and the bolt shifted. He freed the axe and worked six inches of the spear point under the iron plate. He levered the shaft, slowly. Both bolts had been unseated. The whole cleat rose a quarter of an inch, held only by the great weight on the chain. He stopped and left the halberd jammed in place.

  ‘Pascale, get in the skiff.’

  As he helped Pascale mount the gunwale he saw Carla’s face.

  She was staring ashore. She was stricken.

  Tannhauser followed her gaze.

  A tall figure walked along the beach from the east, from behind the moored boats. There was purpose in his stride. He was headed for the wharf steps and Bernard Garnier.

  ‘Mattias,’ said Carla. ‘That’s Orlandu.’

  Orlandu carried a bucket in his one good hand.

  ‘Aye. It is.’

  Tannhauser rolled his neck.

  He pulled Pascale back down.

  ‘Mattias,’ said Carla. ‘What’s he doing?’

  Tannhauser knew what Orlandu was doing. He might well have done the same himself. He might have left him to it, too, but the dread and confusion in Carla’s voice spared him that decision. She turned to look at him. Her lips trembled.

  In all the time he had known her, through every heartbreak and horror, he had never seen so much as the ghost of a chance that her spirit might be broken. Her spirit had only broken once, long before they had met, and she had tempered it anew, from metals unknown even to him. It was Orlandu who had broken her before, though he had not known it then, any more than he knew that he was about to do so now.

  ‘Mattias?’

  ‘Orlandu’s buying time that we no longer need.’

  It was only half the truth, but Tannhauser didn’t reveal his other intuitions.

  He added, ‘But he’s not to know that.’

  Carla nodded. He reached down and she took his hand. It was cold and wet, and her touch choked him. He found another smile.

  ‘You look after our daughter and I’ll look after our son.’

  Tannhauser showed Pascale the cleat and how to lever the halberd.

  ‘Four or five cranks, a little at a time, and the river is open. Show Grymonde how to do it. If the militia come down the causeway, tell him to break the boom and get in the boat and go. I leave my wife and family in your hands, so do as I would, and do it cold. The decision to go is yours, not Carla’s, do you understand?’

  Pascale grabbed his arm.

  ‘Don’t. Stay here.’

  ‘I can’t let all the boys go down.’ He grinned. ‘I’d be the only one left.’

  Pascale let go of his arm. She nodded.

  Tannhauser put a hand on Grymonde’s shoulder and squeezed.

  ‘My Infant, I have business on shore, with a boy and a bucket.’

  ‘You are a stubborn man.’

  ‘It’s a good day for being stubborn. Do as Pascale tells you.’

  ‘I’ve become accustomed to taking orders from children and women,’ said Grymonde. ‘I recommend it.’

  ‘If in doubt break the boom, for La Rossa and the nightingale.’

  Tannhauser started down the causeway.

  ‘So what’s in this bucket?’ called Grymonde.

  Tannhauser didn’t answer. No point upsetting Carla.

  The last circle was waiting to be closed.

  At the place of dead monkeys.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  The Place of Dead Monkeys

  TANNHAUSER UNSLUNG ALTAN’S bow and drew four arrows. The string was bloody but the Turks wove them with such conditions in mind. Pure silk spun straight from the cocoon, and stiffened with isinglass and resin. He nocked and stopped by the impaled and sodden corpse. The last flatboat was deserted, an open grave for any who dared try to cross it. Tannhauser looked at the Pilgrims on the jetty, thirty feet away. They sneered and scowled, and one displayed his arse, but their invitations to battle couldn’t disguise their hope that he’d decline. Some were sincere in their truculence, but it was a rare man who had the nerve to be the one to start a war.

  Taken as a whole, they just wanted him to leave.

  A hundred feet east of the jetty, Garnier aped a general stunned by events passably well, but he lacked the experience that made a general a general, good or bad: that of sending an uncertain number of his men to their certain deaths, and watching them die for nothing.

  Dominic might have done better. But if Tannhauser’s intuitions were right, Dominic’s severed head was in Orlandu’s bucket.

  He couldn’t think of any other use for the bucket, unless Orlandu had decided to deliver milk to the troops. If there was a head in there, he could think of no other head it might be. Orlandu had gone from the bridge to the Hôtel Le Tellier. He had waited behind the door by the piled slain. When Dominic had returned in search of Petit Christian, he had found the chandelier embellished with his father’s face.

  It took iron in the gut to saw through a man’s spine. Especially one-handed, with a knife. Every eye ashore was fixed on Tannhauser but they were watching the wrong man. Tannhauser looked up the beach.

  Orlandu was passing through a scatter of Pilgrims. They paid him little mind. He was one of them, the disciple of Marcel Le Tellier, no less. He had tied red and white ribbons around his wounded arm. His face was in shadow but Tannhauser sensed the light in his eyes. He must have seen Tannhauser, and Grymonde, and the chidren and his mother in the skiff. He was too intelligent not to read the field, the situation too peculiar not to strike him for what it was. All combatants were inclined to go their ways without further bloodshed. Even Tannhauser, or he’d have been hard at them already.

  Orlandu was the man who had the nerve.

  He aimed to make amends for starting one war by starting yet another. A practice hallowed by a thousand kings.

  He’d get Garnier to look at the head, then he’d stab him. A grand gesture on a grand stage; followed, in all likelihood, by heroic death, perhaps even immortality.

  Tannhauser understood. Not only Orlundu’s need
to right the wrong he had done, but that excruciating tension whose allure transgressed and transcended all other experience. He understood why that feeling was worth dying for. It gave him no joy to steal another man’s thunder; but the price Carla would pay was too high.

  If Tannhauser summoned him to the boom, Orlandu could probably make the forty yards across the beach without anyone trying to stop him. If he refused, Tannhauser, at this range, could put a broadhead though Garnier’s thighs for a certainty. That done, Orlandu’s bucket might as well contain milk. With his grand stage in turmoil and his moment gone, he would heed the call of survival, though the odds would be thinner.

  Orlandu reached the foot of the broad wooden stair. Garnier glanced down at him, and away, as if the youth were irrelevant to his troubles. Orlandu was just eight steps from the wharf and another reckless lunge for redemption. Tannhauser feared to endanger him with too particular a greeting; and he wanted a space around him to create a killing zone for any rash enough to enter it. He let him climb three steps and called out.

  ‘We’re ready to go.’

  Orlandu stopped and looked at him.

  Garnier, his bombast undiminished by shame, mistook Tannhauser’s intention.

  ‘Then for God’s sake go!’ he said. ‘I have no power to pursue you!’

  The moon shone full on Garnier’s face. He was sweating in his steel plate. His flag had been pissed on, his private army decimated, his day of glory defiled. Beneath the rage and malice, he exuded self-pity and fear.

  Tannhauser said, ‘The Devil requires thy soul of thee tonight.’

  Garnier put his fist to his heart, as if to lend himself a flavour of gallantry.

  ‘I was never Le Tellier’s man. I admired you. None of this was necessary.’

  Orlandu hadn’t moved, though his options must have been clear.

  Tannhauser gestured to the vast and howling necropolis.

  ‘Speak not to me of what was necessary.’

  ‘Don’t you hear me, chevalier? I yield. You’ve won.’

  Orlandu turned away, as if the struggle with his conscience was done. He set the bucket down. He was going to submit to reason. If Tannhauser could spin out this farce for another minute, Orlandu would be on the boom before anyone noticed, much less cared. Garnier, disturbed by his silence, proved a fine fellow buffoon.