Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  ‘You take all the honours, man. What more do you want?’

  Tannhauser caught a glimpse of blue at Garnier’s throat. He’d recognised Carla’s scarf when Garnier left the Hôtel Le Tellier, and had guessed how she had used it.

  ‘Is that my wife’s scarf you’re wearing?’

  Someone guffawed. A gust of nervous laughter blew across the square.

  Tannhauser grinned. Let them warm to him, if that was possible.

  Garnier lifted the scarf from round his neck as if it were a noose.

  Orlandu pulled a cloth from the mouth of the bucket.

  Tannhauser’s scalp clenched.

  The fanatic’s son was going to show Garnier the head. He wasn’t vacating his stage, he was taking it back. Tannhauser understood that, too, but it was no longer a matter of conscience. The wrong had been righted well enough when he murdered Dominic.

  ‘You. The man with one arm and a bucket. Fetch me Carla’s scarf.’

  Orlandu dropped the cloth but neither turned nor straightened up.

  ‘Carla is tired and I am impatient. Do not test my goodwill.’

  Orlandu hesitated.

  He reached in the bucket.

  He had to declare his manhood.

  It was time to see at what cost.

  As Orlandu hoisted Dominic’s head by its hair, Tannhauser drew and shot.

  The weight of the pull was enormous. The Turkish string sang like a harp.

  Orlandu flung the head up the steps, but no one much noticed.

  The broadhead ploughed through Garnier’s crotch a thumb’s width below his cuirass. It must have hit a heavy bone, for it spun him around like some gigantic marionette. He hit the timbers with a sound so dire his troops moaned with him. Dominic’s head rolled to a stop inches in front of his face, but his agony was more compelling than the sight of it.

  Tannhauser nocked. While the Pilgrims gaped at their captain’s fall, and before the spectacle provoked them to revolt, Tannhauser gave them something else to watch.

  ‘Fetch me the scarf, man. Now. Or I’ll drop you on the spot and find some other to fill your shoes.’

  Orlandu looked at him. He didn’t expect to get shot, but the deeper interpretations did not elude him. He nodded. He turned and climbed the steps.

  ‘Leave your trophy where it lies. Your mates can admire it later.’

  The threat, along with the suggestion that the head was that of some poor Huguenot, should seal the masquerade. Tannhauser watched the watchers.

  Orlandu stooped and pulled the scarf from under Garnier’s body. If Garnier now knew that Orlandu was no Pilgrim, he conveyed the fact only with guttural grunts of pain. Orlandu walked along the edge of the square to the jetty. Several Pilgrims muttered encouragement. Orlandu stepped down into the flatboat. He looked at Tannhauser.

  Tannhauser beckoned him, his eyes still on the mob.

  Orlandu walked the length of the boat and Tannhauser stepped back. Orlandu climbed across the chain and into the stern. He proffered the scarf. He was scared; he was sick; he was weak; and he hid it all well. But not from Tannhauser.

  ‘Give it to your mother.’

  ‘She won’t want to take it from me.’

  ‘Carla would take it from you if it carried the plague. I told her you were buying time we didn’t need. Since you bought that in plenty, you’ve no good reason to gainsay me.’

  ‘The truth is a bad reason?’

  ‘The truth serves only your vanity. She already has one baby to feed.’

  Orlandu flinched.

  ‘You proved what you needed to prove to me,’ said Tannhauser. ‘If you didn’t prove it to yourself the venture was a failure and you’re still a boy. That’s for you to decide. All your mother needs to know is that you’re alive. So I ask you, man to man, to spare her your guilt, your truth, your metaphysical doubts, and whatever other hogwash you’ve been dining on.’

  Orlandu tucked the scarf in his sling.

  ‘I bought time you didn’t need.’

  ‘We’d didn’t need the time to get away. But I’m grateful for every minute.’

  Orlandu didn’t understand. He couldn’t imagine what his return meant to Carla. Such ignorance was a son’s birthright; and a certain sort of stupidity the privilege of youth.

  ‘I’m grateful for Dominic, too,’ said Tannhauser, ‘if that head be his.’

  Orlandu pulled a knife from the sling and cut the ribbons from his arm.

  ‘It was the vilest thing I ever did.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that. Your mother need not.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  Tannhauser slapped him on the back and stood aside.

  ‘Tell Grymonde to break the boom.’

  Orlandu walked by. Tannhauser almost told him not to fall in the water, but to a Maltese, even one sore wounded, the insult would have been too great. He watched him pick his way through the bloodbath and cross the gap to the third lighter. Tannhauser was exhausted down to bones he didn’t know he had, and he was testy, but he reckoned that the privilege of age. He turned back to the jetty.

  The conversation had taken place beyond earshot of the Pilgrims, though Tannhauser had kept one eye on their puzzlement. Now that they had their solution, and could add treachery, deception and the pleasure of being gulled to their humiliations, they were enraged. The tide of oaths and insults was more heartfelt than before, but he saw none who wanted to die so close to bedtime.

  He asked himself why his life had made him so familiar with such swine, but before he had a chance to mount an answer, a scream echoed across the beach. The scream was of so harrowing a quality even Tannhauser might have been moved had it not been Bernard Garnier’s. Gut, muscle and bone. The edges Altan had honed on the arrowhead were carving the captain’s entrails with every breath and squirm. Garnier screamed again.

  ‘By the blood of Saint-Jacques!’

  Tannhauser heard a man praying for a miracle, but a figure knelt by the captain, and he heard it different. He stood up. It was Ensign Bonnett. Since Tannhauser had left Notre-Dame, the zealous little turd had inconvenienced him more than any other. His first instinct was to shoot him, but again the provocation seemed unwise. He hesitated and learned again why he mistrusted the practice.

  ‘By the blood of Saint-Jacques!’ shouted Bonnett. ‘For God and the King!’

  The mob roared, at first without form. The rallying cry was taken up.

  Tannhauser shot Ensign Bonnett in the chest.

  Bonnett dropped across his master and exacerbated his anguish.

  Tannhauser turned away.

  He saw Orlandu slide over the gunwale into the skiff.

  Grymonde had both hands on the halberd but wasn’t cranking it.

  Pascale was shouting in his face.

  ‘Pascale,’ called Tannhauser. ‘All aboard.’

  She stopped and looked at him. Tannhauser pointed at the skiff.

  He turned back to the mob.

  A surge from the rear of the jetty pushed two Pilgrims to stumble into the flatboat. A third jumped in behind them of his own accord, and then a fourth. Tannhauser let an untidy file assemble, then drew and shot the Pilgrim in front. The fletchings vanished through his belly and he fell, and the man behind him sank to his knees with the bloody feathers protruding from his privates. Tannhauser nocked the last of the arrows in his fist and pinned the next two together like a pair of rutting dogs. His shoulders ached already from the weight of Altan’s bow. He stretched them as he looked back.

  Grymonde was cranking the halberd under the cleat. He paused after each movement as atrocious spasms waxed and waned within his body. Only Paris could have made him; only Paris could have brought him down. Everything he had left, and, had his heart not been so great, that would have been nothing, was thrown into his final task, of liberating the children who had liberated him.

  Tannhauser would be sorry to leave the Infant behind. He was relieved not to see Pascale. Everyone who needed to be in the skiff was in it, e
xcept he.

  He turned again.

  The fervour on the jetty had cooled, the invasion of the flatboat abandoned.

  On the beach, the wharf, the square, jeers and battle cries continued, though those who voiced them showed no inclination to move. God. King. Saint-Jacques. Saint-Jacques.

  By his holy blood.

  Blood, blood, blood.

  They wouldn’t have vexed him so much if they’d known what they were talking about. Tannhauser’s skin was caked in a blackening slurry, in places half an inch thick. He was covered in the blood of men he despised. His body was as drained as he had ever known it to be. His belly was empty. He was thirsty. His loins ached. So did his feet.

  And none of this was necessary.

  He turned his back on them, but found himself unwilling to take the next step. He had no good reasons, very few bad ones, and many of the highest order, moral and practical, to the contrary. But it didn’t sit well with him. These dogs had been snapping at his heels all night, and he had run from them. He had thinned the pack, but the rest would go home and tell a different tale, and before long they’d believe it themselves. Their tale was no concern of Tannhauser’s; but his own was. He had chided Orlandu for impulses not dissimilar; but that was a privilege of age, too. The memory of cowards and child murderers spitting at his back as he walked away wasn’t of the species he knew how to carry.

  ‘My Infant.’

  Grymonde stopped. At this range, his eyes seemed bored right through him.

  Tannhauser unslung the quiver, and laid it down with Altan’s bow.

  ‘Will you give me a minute?’ he said.

  ‘If you’ll let me come with you,’ said Grymonde.

  ‘You’re already with me.’

  ‘You are a stubborn man.’

  Tannhauser stepped past the desecrated flag and into the last flatboat.

  He picked up a spear. He looked at the jeerers, and curiosity quieted them.

  Tannhauser said, ‘Give me that cage.’

  ‘What cage?’

  Tannhauser pointed with the spear.

  ‘Load it on this lighter and I’ll let you kiss your wives goodnight.’

  Several of those nearest the cage took a closer look.

  ‘It’s a cage of dead cats. Or rats.’

  ‘Monkeys, I’d say, from Africa.’

  ‘Christ. They’re horrible.’

  ‘They could be poxed.’

  ‘Tell him to come and get ’em himself.’

  ‘Come and get ’em yourself!’

  Two of the men Tannhauser had shot were still alive. He stuck the first in the throat notch, and the foremost spokesman stepped back, and so did the rest. Tannhauser stabbed the second wretch in the spleen from behind and walked to the stern of the boat.

  One step onto the thwart and another onto the jetty.

  Pride obliged the spokesman to advance into the space he had vacated and lower his half-pike. Tannhauser evaded a thrust and as he rose from the thwart and mounted the jetty he lanced him between the bollocks and the anus and pitched him, shrieking, into the river. The spectacle of so vile a death drove his fellows backwards another step. They levelled half a dozen spears at Tannhauser. Those Pilgrims behind this rank were clustered too tight to point their weapons anywhere but skyward.

  Tannhauser was aware that in this position Carla could clearly see him. Out of respect for her gaze and her feelings, he gave them another chance.

  ‘I told you to fetch me the cage.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, what do you want it for?’

  ‘I want it so that you’ll tell me to get it myself.’

  No one did. Neither did any have the wit to bring the cage.

  ‘He must be raving mad.’

  Tannhauser raised the spear overarm in a throwing grip, aimed at the centre of the line, and the two there turned to flee, one into the other, and their spears crossed.

  Tannhauser charged the right flank, and warded the two outer spear shafts towards the middle with a sweep, and closed, and grabbed the outermost by his belt and threw him off the edge into the water, and lanced the man behind him in the gut and let him grab the spear. He drew the lapis dagger and stabbed the newly rightmost man in the armpit and drew his second dagger. With a double lunge to the guts, he stabbed the outermost two in the next rank while they wondered what to do. He slid into the gap between the first and second lines, both already buckling with panic, and stabbed the next man to either side at the same time. Ten-inch blades. The root of the neck; the heart. He ducked and wove, his senses and instincts working faster than his brain, the killing strokes plotted three, four men in advance of their execution. Their spears at this range were worse than useless; their senses and their instincts, slack at best, now stupefied by the gusts of blood venting from the bodies of their friends, by the urge to void their bowels, by the speed and fury of Death’s plenipotentiary on the Seine.

  Footwork and targets; right dagger left, left dagger right; straddle a pike shaft. A fist came at his head and he rolled with it and stabbed its owner in the liver. Trust the blades, get ahead of the dead as they fall; heart, neck, neck, gut; a knife: stab him in the forearm, stab him in the chest. He killed five; he killed seven in fewer than that many beats of his heart. The gore on his hide oiled his progress through the press. Dying fingers slithered over his skin. He turned his face away from a fountain of bloody vomit. Behind him an entanglement of woe; before him of unrectified panic. There were no more ranks, just a mass who hadn’t yet realised they were fleeing, those who would have fought struggling past the throng of those who wouldn’t, and both varieties lambs to his rage.

  He killed eleven.

  He glimpsed the mazement in their eyes as they died.

  He killed fifteen and then lost the count as he killed more.

  A wide space opened on this side of the tangled retreat, and he left both daggers in the chest of the last and plucked the fellow’s halberd from his hands.

  He gored a charging swordsman and pitched him into the legs of a second, and set himself, and dashed that second’s brains from his skull with the axe. He axed a third through the thorax and judged the distance to the next man, and that man saw him and turned to run, and Tannhauser pursued him and spiked him between the shoulders at the full length of the shaft. He followed him down and spiked him again through the base of the skull.

  Tannhauser felt better than he had felt all day. He felt as well as he had ever felt in his life. He felt the Quintessence of all that Destiny had meant him to be flow through his veins, the good and the evil, the crimson and the white, and it felt true. He felt true. He defied God to strike him down for his transgressions. And God did not.

  Tannhauser took a breath and surveyed the field.

  He’d cleared the jetty and was a good way onto the square. The random stacks of building materiel provided cover, but he saw no lurkers. The east wing of the Louvre was dark but for the lantern above the gatehouse, and another light burning in the tower. There were maybe twenty Pilgrims left, and a dozen more on the beach, but the closest was too far to be hounded. Half were headed elsewhere at a healthy pace and they weren’t looking back. Among the rest, most were delayed by shock or the compulsion to find out what happened next. There were a few still sizing him up, war veterans perhaps, but what had most veterans done but stand in a line and take orders? The dullest knew he’d be butchered like a shoat, and the best had no idea how to tackle him.

  Garnier lay ten paces away, moaning under Bonnett’s weight like a badly butchered steer in his own abattoir. Tannhauser walked over and put a foot on Bonnett’s chest, and pulled out the arrow there transfixing him, and stuck it in his belt. He kicked Bonnett aside to better see the arrow in Garnier’s groin. A foot of shaft was visible beyond the fletchings. The other two feet had skated up from his pelvis and through his intestines. A slow and mortal wound, and no less than he deserved, but his death would give the laggards some sense of finality. Tannhauser looked the captain in the eye
s, but the man was incapable of knowing aught but pain. Tannhauser raised the halberd in both hands, on the vertical. He drove the point through Garnier’s mouth and impaled him to the timbers of the wharf through the nape of his neck.

  He looked at the laggards and drew his sword, and they turned and hurried towards the warrens of the Ville. Those on the beach trudged east, past the moored boats.

  Tannhauser strode through the shambles to the jetty. Four crawlers grovelled in the moon-blacked spillings of the slain like penitents at the altar of some Mexican temple. He beheaded them, one by one, and cleaned his blade, and reckoned his bloodlust slaked. He retrieved his daggers and flicked and sheathed them. He picked up a cap and towelled his brows and dropped the cap.

  He walked to the cage of dead monkeys.

  It lay on its side, the tiny, exquisite creatures still piled inside it. The heat and damp of the day had merged their carcasses into one grotesque mass, multi-headed and multi-limbed, as if it were the single pelt of some fairy-tale monster.

  He dragged the cage to the downriver edge of the jetty. The door of the cage comprised one entire wall, and he cut through the leather hinges and opened it. He tipped the cage over and emptied its prisoners into the water.

  If all had believed him mad he would have had no means to contradict them. But the square was deserted of all but the dead, and so was the jetty, and so the beach and the boom. There was no one left to ask the question but he, and he was indifferent to the answer.

  He sheathed his sword.

  On the upriver side, steps led down to the beach and he took them, and waded into the water up to the knees of his high boots. He bent from the waist and rinsed his hands, and scrubbed the gore-matted hair on his forearms, his shoulders, his chest. He scooped handfuls of river into his armpits and over his face. He spread his legs wide and doubled over and ducked his head beneath the water. He scraped handfuls of clots from his hair and let the current carry them away. He squeezed the nape of his neck in the palm of his hand. He stood up.