Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

  The girls stopped dead.

  ‘I want to get to the top of the bell tower,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘The top of the tower?’ Though he daily catered to grotesque sexual appetites, this request struck the pimp as bizarre. ‘But there’s four hundred steps. So I’m told.’

  ‘If you have the key, open the door and I’ll give you a sol.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want these two sweet girls to starve, would you, sire?’

  ‘I don’t want the girls. I want to get to the roof.’

  ‘I know you don’t want the girls, sire, what I mean is –’

  ‘Open the door and take the sol. Or I’ll take the key.’

  The pimp was as tough as his trade demanded, which meant he could frighten women and girls and the kind of men who paid to abuse them. He grimaced as if swallowing vinegar. He wagged a key at the end of a cord around his neck.

  ‘A sol for a minute’s work?’ He smiled. ‘Better wages than most earn in a day.’

  He opened the door. The twin girls fluttered over. With their painted smiles and hollowed eyes they looked like emaciated clowns approaching a torture chamber. Tannhauser wondered what it took to make them rush towards whatever vile ordeal they expected beyond the door. He wanted to stab the pimp. He didn’t.

  The pimp swung around and punched the nearest girl in the stomach.

  ‘This gentleman isn’t for you two, silly!’

  As she doubled over, the other caught her and stopped her falling.

  Tannhauser wedged the pimp’s fist between his shoulders and bounced his face off the wall by the door. The pimp spat out tooth fragments and blood.

  ‘You can’t walk into Notre-Dame and treat a man like this. It’s a cathedral.’

  Tannhauser cranked the arm higher.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tybaut. It’s Tybaut.’ He grit his teeth. ‘There’s no need for this, sire. I’ve got my influences. I’ve got my value. I’m a nose. Well, a nose to a nose –’

  ‘A nose to a nose?’ Tannhauser glanced at Grégoire.

  ‘He spies for a spy. A nose to a nose.’

  Tannhauser hurt the pimp some more. Tybaut grunted.

  ‘There are all kinds of spies,’ said Grégoire.

  ‘Your imbecile is right, sire. Police spies, court spies, palace spies. Brothel, tavern and street spies. Bedroom spies and kitchen spies. Spies for husbands and spies for wives. Not to mention spies for the colleges and spies for the Church. Every second servant in town is a spy, guaranteed. Some of the highest messieurs in the land are spies, but even you must know about them. We’re all spying on each other, sire, aren’t we? Spying is life.’

  ‘Who is this grand nose you spy for?’

  ‘I may have exaggerated his importance, sire. He’s one of the deacons here. But I believe he will rise and I hope to ascend with him.’

  ‘And you think you could be of value to me.’

  ‘I guarantee it, sire. With respect, you don’t seem to know the workings as well as you might. And everyone can benefit from knowing more than they know.’

  ‘It would benefit the world at large if I broke your spine.’

  ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying so, sire, you don’t strike me as a man who greatly cares to benefit the world at large.’

  ‘Who’s your deacon on the rise?’

  ‘Have a heart, sire.’ Tybaut grunted with fresh pain. ‘Father Pierre.’

  ‘Did he tell you to wear this white armband?’

  ‘He didn’t have to. I can see what I can see, same as you.’

  Tannhauser let go of his arm. ‘Tell me something else worth knowing.’

  Tybaut turned around and pointed at Juste.

  ‘Well, he’s a red rag to a bull, should you meet a bull, and you will. I mean, most people are thick, you know that, and the police are even thicker. As for the militia?’ He knocked his knuckles on the side of his head. ‘But that’s only most of them, not all of them. It’s obvious he’s a foreigner, and so are you, sire, though that’s no crime. But that little white cross he’s got pinned to his chest doesn’t make him a Catholic.’

  ‘Give him your shirt. That jerkin, too.’

  Tybaut laughed. Tannhauser slapped him. Tybaut hit the wall again and slid down the stones to his knees. The sound of the slap echoed around the cathedral. Heads turned, then turned away. Tannhauser glanced at the twin girls. They were clutching each other and staring at Tybaut. They were concerned for him. They were scared.

  They were scared of Tannhauser.

  Tybaut collected himself, head down, thinking, still on his knees.

  ‘If you draw that knife I will blind you and cut your thumbs off,’ said Tannhauser. ‘You can spy on the other cripples outside the Hôtel-Dieu.’

  Tybaut stood up. He papered a smile over humiliation and rage.

  ‘I’m used to getting a bit more respect than this, sire.’

  Tannhauser slapped him with his other hand. Tybaut was far too slow. He went down again and heaved for breath on hands and knees.

  ‘Get up, pimp. Give him the clothes.’

  Tybaut clambered to his feet. There were tears in his eyes.

  ‘You’re a boy with qualities. You’re wasting them.’

  ‘Yes, sire,’ said Tybaut. ‘Nice to see someone making the most of theirs.’

  He stepped back to avoid a blow that didn’t come. He stripped off the jerkin.

  ‘Try not to get blood on the shirt.’

  ‘You might have thought of that before you knocked my teeth out.’

  ‘What else have you heard today? What do you expect?’

  Tybaut threw the jerkin at Juste. ‘I’ve heard we’re going to rob and kill a lot of heretics. And that’s what I expect will happen.’

  ‘You’re no killer.’

  ‘I meant we Parisians. It’s the hottest day of summer, the hive’s been kicked once too often, and the bees have had enough. If you weren’t so bloody lofty you’d hear them swarming. You’d shit yourself.’

  ‘You mean the militia.’

  ‘See? You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Tybaut stripped off his shirt. ‘Who are the militia? A crowd of cobblers. But there’s militias within the militia. The leagues, the confraternities. Certain priests run their own militias. Certain captains. Certain noble gentlemen. Then there’s the beggars, the thieves, the smugglers, the bravos. The pimps. Kingdoms within the kingdom. Kings and captains in deed if not in title. And then you’ve got the police, wherein you’ll find every sort of faction, and each of them consorting with one or more of the rest. Each lot have their purposes. As do we all. What’s yours?’

  Tybaut balled his shirt and threw it at Juste.

  ‘I hope that’s not lousy,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘I’m very fussy about fleas, lice and ticks. You won’t find one on those girls, neither. I look after them, sire, and as you see, they’re in blossom. They can still be yours for one white franc. Or your boys if they want to lose their chastity. I won’t even charge the extra for the imbecile. That’s a bargain. I’ve schooled those little lambs myself in every known depravity, plus some I invented fresh all by myself.’

  ‘Give me the key.’

  Tybaut handed it over. Tannhauser proffered some coins.

  ‘Here’s another sol. When I come back down I want to see your girls on that bench eating something hot. If I don’t, I will keep the key.’

  Tybaut took the coins. ‘Bread and hot soup it is, sire.’

  ‘Pigeon.’

  ‘I don’t believe pigeon soup is available, sire.’

  Tannhauser slapped him. Tybaut picked himself up.

  ‘The girls bless you, sire.’

  Tannhauser climbed the spiral stair without stopping and without altering his pace. His shoulders scraped the walls. The faces of the twin child prostitutes stayed with him. They made him think of Carla. They would have moved her to pity. But the world would no longer be graced by Carla’s pity. He stepped out onto an ext
erior stone walkway that ran between the two bell towers. He didn’t look out at the city, nor down on the Parvis. He walked to the base of the north tower, where he saw a wicket. It wasn’t locked.

  He climbed a second, tighter, stair. His chest felt scorched. His back ached. His weapons snagged the stones. Sweat poured from him in pints. The exertion cleared his mind of everything except Carla’s image. By the time he neared the top he felt empty.

  A breeze caught his face. It was almost cool and smelled of burning charcoal. He rested his forehead against the stones and caught his breath. He mounted the last step. He climbed on top of the parapet wall, his toes treading on air.

  He looked down.

  The entire city swayed far beneath him.

  For the first time he perceived a single entity, immense and crazed.

  Paris.

  He glimpsed her essence.

  She had torn out his heart and left nothing in its place.

  She would take that place for herself, if he would let her.

  Her spirit would merge with his and she would never leave him.

  And he would never leave her.

  And in return she would fill the emptiness inside him.

  But never with a heart.

  And never with love.

  Tannhauser found himself willing.

  Love brought pain.

  Lucifer skipped onto the parapet wall beside him. He surveyed the reeking metropolis below with the hauteur of one who owned it. He looked at Tannhauser.

  ‘Have you come to make me an offer on my soul?’

  The mutilated creature yapped once.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s already taken.’

  ‘Master?’

  Tannhauser heard the anxiety in the voice. He stepped down from the wall.

  Grégoire sagged against the doorway with relief. Juste panted into view.

  ‘Don’t be afraid. I’ll find some other way to die in due course.’

  Tannhauser noted the useless red shoes hanging around Grégoire’s neck.

  ‘If I see those again I will throw them off the top.’

  Grégoire removed the shoes and hid them behind his back.

  ‘Here. Look at this.’

  Tannhauser retrieved La Fosse’s map and unfolded it. He donned his new nose-glasses. The paper was damp and the ink had run, but the quality of both was such that the map remained readable. It was accurate but could not convey a sense of distance. The city was small yet the moment one passed through its gates it became limitless, as if to enter Paris were to pass through some defect in the weave of material creation. Every mile seemed like ten. As seen from the tower, the city was a stain leaking out across the farmland that unrolled in every direction from its suburbs. Villages nested in grain fields ripe for harvest. As far as the blue and green horizon, the vista shimmered. If it seemed otherworldly, it was. The world was out there; within the walls there was Paris.

  With Grégoire’s help he traced on both the map and the living city below the route he had taken since his arrival at the Porte Saint-Jacques. No one section was far yet each had seemed a journey worthy of Ulysses. He also realised how small a fraction of the city he had seen. Even vacated of its inhabitants, it would have been unknowable. Seething as it was, it changed from moment to moment into something it had never quite been before and never would be again.

  He located and fixed in his mind’s eye various landmarks. The city was a sea of rooftops, and no two among the tens of thousands seemed to be the same height. Dwellings were stacked on dwellings, and others were stacked on those, as if the city had been built by an infant in the hope that it all should fall down. The moss that cloaked the roofs had been burned pale as jade by the sun. The bowed and tilting walls of the streets obscured all but two or three of the broadest roads, the latter themselves barely twenty feet wide. Gardens invisible at street level mapped the quartiers favoured by the rich.

  Beyond the western wall of the Latin Quarter was the abbey of Saint-Germain. The other sprawling faubourgs that circled the walls and moats, north and south, were sorry collections of cheap huts to which the poorer artisans had retreated. So densely built was the island of the City below that even from this vantage the Seine could not be seen.

  North-east of the Hôtel D’Aubray was the Grand Tower of the Temple, the headquarters of Tannhauser’s Order. Its walls were white and its Donjon and corner turrets were capped with black conical roofs. The tower was surrounded by an enclosure of thirty acres within a high wall, and defended by ramparts, watchtowers and moats.

  Tannhauser stowed the map and glasses.

  ‘Can’t we stay up here?’ asked Juste. He was leaning over the wall. ‘For a few days? We could bring food, water. Who would know? Who would care?’

  ‘I need my guns. I need to see to Carla’s body, at the chapel. She didn’t die of bad luck. She was assassinated. I need to know why.’

  ‘Tybaut is right,’ said Juste. ‘I’m going to be killed.’

  He pointed. Tannhauser looked down towards the Pont Notre-Dame.

  From this height a length of the north-west side of the street was visible. Sunlight winked on the sign of the Golden Hammer. A cluster of people dressed in black stood beneath the sign, their backs to the shop window, their hands raised in surrender. There were perhaps eight of them, a family group. A banner appeared nearby. A line of militiamen lunged into view. There was a pause. Then in a sudden flurry they speared the whole family, stabbing until what looked like a pile of black rags lay heaped before the window. At this distance the murders were strangely silent, but Tannhauser saw the mouths of the dying gape open as they screamed.

  ‘Can I stay up here alone?’ asked Juste. ‘With Lucifer?’

  ‘No. Put on that shirt and jerkin and keep the white cross.’

  Tannhauser walked around the corner of the parapet for a better angle to the north. The Place de Grève had half-emptied. The regular troops and the artillery hadn’t moved, but loose gangs of militia were dispersing in all directions.

  ‘Master?’ called Grégoire.

  Tannhauser returned to find Grégoire pointing at a column of smoke that rose between the rooftops in the south-western quarter of the Left Bank. The smoke was fresh, hanging in the hot, still air, and it seemed to rise from a street, not a building. Tannhauser was distracted by the sounds of a commotion rising from the Parvis below.

  The square was in confusion. The street entertainers and food peddlers were packing up and leaving with the organised haste of those with a nose for trouble. Even the beggars were vacating prime spots on the cathedral approaches.

  The exodus was provoked by a gang of militia, advancing with three flags and a fanfare raised by a pair of drummers and a piper. They filled the street from wall to wall. A large bearded man in a steel helm walked in front, wielding a sword in time to the music. The rest of the armed irregulars formed a hollow rectangle stretching behind him. The hollow was filled by a mass of Huguenot prisoners in their distinctive black clothes.

  They were of all ages and sexes, family groups rousted from their homes, and in all they must have numbered between three and four score. Some were singing and their voices sent pitiful scraps of the Psalms to soar above the drumming, until spear butts applied to the ribs shut them up.

  The uneasy peace of the last two hours was over. The pack had decided to follow the scent of blood. All kings feared Anarchy more than plague. This king had opened the door of its cage. The beast was crawling out. He looked at Juste.

  ‘I won’t tell you again. Put the pimp’s clothes on.’

  ‘That fire in the sixteenth must be close to the printer’s shop,’ said Grégoire.

  His attention was still focused near the south-western curve of the city wall.

  Tannhauser looked. With a sudden billow the rising smoke became thicker.

  Tannhauser pressed a coin into Grégoire’s hand.

  ‘Bring Clementine to the Parvis. Fast as you can.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

>   Alice

  THEY SAT ACROSS a table in the kitchen and drank rosehip tea.

  The kitchen was at the front of the house. The sun had risen high enough to shine into the yard and through the windows. In the rising heat, the tea was refreshing.

  Carla could not take her eyes off the woman in front of her.

  Alice was shapeless, heavy boned, once plump, now shrunken by hardship and years. The skin of her arms and jowls hung in wrinkled flaps. Her face was broad, her cheeks patched with purple. Her mouth was full, her lips the colour of liver and puckered over her gums where the teeth were missing. Her hair was a dark ruddy brown, wisped with white, and cut crudely just above her shoulders. Her eyes were winter-grey, yet in them Carla saw Grymonde. There was a deep tiredness in her, yet also the embers of a natural force that once must have been tremendous. In spite of all, she radiated largeness. Carla couldn’t tell how old she was; sixty at least, perhaps seventy, or even more. Old as she was, diminished as she was, Alice seemed to transcend the notion of age.

  ‘Time’s a fairy tale, love,’ said Alice, as if reading her thoughts. ‘A gaol without walls. They were clever, weren’t they, them as got us all to believe in it. Calendars, dates – the year of Our Lord, no less, that’ll keep us quiet, won’t it? But like most such craft and fancy, it’s naught but another lash for our backs. Now they have clocks, so they can have us in shackles and chains as well.’

  Carla was uncertain of how to contend with her. She was in a den of thieves, with the mother of a man prone to murder all and sundry without compunction. Alice laughed, a dry laugh that, had it been less warm, might well have mocked her.

  ‘Don’t be timid here, love, that would never do. Speak up. You’ll be speaking up before this day’s out, and this woman will be mopping up your slops, so let’s not stand on ceremony.’

  ‘I do appreciate you taking me in, madame, more than words can say.’

  Alice flapped a hand in dismissal. Her palm was shiny and red.

  Carla realised Alice was not merely tired, but far from well, and her heart went out to her. In all her life Carla had never known a woman for whom she felt awe, and few for whom she’d felt any great respect. Her own mother had been weak, docile, afraid of her husband, afraid of the Church, afraid of the opinions of her peers. In every sense she had lived on her knees, and had died in a welter of regrets. Her mother had betrayed Carla in just such a circumstance as this, when she had conspired in the abduction of Orlandu on the morning he was born. Her mother had stolen Carla’s motherhood, and Carla had never found the goodness to forgive her.