Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

  ‘I saw gangs of criminals stripping houses and killing children. I saw streets as lawless as those of the cities of the plain before Gabriel razed them. I saw the same things you saw. Do you think Catholics are killing only Huguenots? It’s a free for all, man. A day to murder anyone you fancy. Your dead men had enemies. Who does not? Cast your suspicions where there’s a chance of finding the guilty. Unless you believe I killed twenty men with the help of a carthorse and two boys. Or two girls.’

  Garnier tried to appease him with a short laugh.

  Tannhauser didn’t smile.

  ‘Your Excellency, these are deeper waters than I’m used to. I beg your pardon.’

  Tannhauser nodded.

  ‘Your counsel is wise and welcome,’ Garnier continued. ‘The militia does indeed have enemies, for we’re the King’s men, body and soul, and the Pope’s, too, and there’s more than one high lord as would drag them both from their sacred thrones. The dark times have only just begun. So, please, tell me how I may serve you.’

  ‘Pledge that these children will not be subject to persecution.’

  Tannhauser turned to the eating house to call the children out.

  They were already crammed into the doorway, watching every move.

  Tannhauser turned back. He looked at Garnier.

  ‘I won’t deceive you, captain. The lad there is my lackey. The girls came upon me as they fled in fear of their lives. Perhaps they were raised in the Protestant faith. I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I don’t care.’

  He leaned into Garnier’s face.

  ‘I am a religious man.’

  Garnier took a step backwards.

  ‘I am a Knight of Saint John the Baptist. My scars were carved by the Turks in the war to save Christendom. Jesus Christ suffered little children to come unto Him, but these have come to me. And while you may not need me as friend, you do not want me for an enemy.’

  Garnier wrung his hands in atonement.

  ‘Chevalier, for you, I’ll have them guarded in my own home.’

  ‘I’m moved by your offer, but I’ve made my own arrangements. Just spread the word that they’re not to be threatened or harmed in any way. Are the white armbands sufficient to preserve them?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll make doubly sure my men understand, on my oath.’

  ‘Good enough. Now I must go, to interview Marcel Le Tellier.’

  Garnier teetered on the verge of another step backwards. His eyes narrowed.

  ‘Can I put in a good word for you, with the Lieutenant Criminel?’ asked Tannhauser.

  ‘Not today,’ said Garnier. ‘Perhaps some other day.’

  ‘Between you and I, conspiracies abound.’

  While Garnier grappled with these sinister innuendos, Tannhauser glanced at the militiamen. They were clustered by the cask, casting poisonous looks in his direction.

  ‘Like you, I’ve commanded men in the field. Morale walks on the edge of a knife.’

  Tannhauser waited for Garnier to nod.

  ‘Don’t turn around just yet,’ said Tannhauser. ‘As the rankers watch us confront each other, we appear to them as giants, making the great decisions that ordain their fate. They’re desperate to have faith in us. They crave it. You are a leader of men. You understand.’

  Garnier was enthralled. ‘Faith. They crave it.’

  ‘That faith knows no better encouragement than the faith that their captains demonstrate in themselves. And not just in themselves, but in each other. My suggestion is that you clap me on the back and turn to your men with a broad smile on your face – in which expression of camaraderie I’ll join you – and they’ll see two giants unperturbed by the perils of the world about them, which perils they themselves fear.’

  As Garnier absorbed this, the smile that grew on his face was not just sincere. He had become Tannhauser’s dog and didn’t even know it.

  Garnier clapped his master on the back and turned with a grin, and Tannhauser laughed a manly laugh, and the militia transformed before their eyes from a crowd of sullen idlers into something that at least resembled men. They straightened their backs. They marshalled their line. They righted their weapons. They smiled; even Ensign Bonnett. Garnier, buoyed by renewed prestige, gave Tannhauser a formal bow. Tannhauser gritted his teeth and returned it. Garnier’s pride was almost pitiful.

  Tannhauser waved the children to the cart. He stowed his guns.

  Frogier stared at him. His voice was a hiss.

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘The captain gives me too much credit. The precise tally is nineteen.’

  Once they’d crossed the bridge, Tannhauser had the children lie down and swore them to monastic silence. Their way led through a thicket of streets, emptied by fear and death and the stagnant heat of the afternoon. The hostel lay due north of Notre Dame and backed directly onto the Seine. The timber building was four storeys high and one room wide. According to Frogier the upper rear windows gave fine views of the gallows on the Place de Grève. The journey had been short but when Tannhauser looked in the cart, all but the stalwart Juste had fallen asleep.

  He didn’t disturb them. He followed Frogier inside and found just the kind of inn that would make a provincial lawyer feel secure: too prim to make one want to stay overlong, but uncluttered and cleaner than most.

  Frogier’s sister, Irène, was a petite woman in her forties, dapper as a crow, with a quick blue gaze that took Tannhauser’s measure with a shrewdness polished by her trade. He mustered what was left of his charm, announced only his legitimate titles and apologised for his unkempt – he hoped not too alarming – appearance.

  In response, and with a hint of censure, she noted that this was no ordinary Sunday. The militia had searched the hostel that morning and taken away two guests, who hadn’t returned. He sensed that what disturbed her was the effect on future business. For himself he was glad to hear that the militia had purged the street, thus leaving themselves no cause to visit again. When Frogier asked Irène where the missing guests’ baggage could be found, she gave him a vexatious glare with which her brother seemed familiar.

  Tannhauser laid out his needs. Bed and board for five exhausted youngsters, who were not to leave the building until he returned, which he hoped would be that night. They were protected by the warrant of Bernard Garnier. One room would do for them all. For the first-floor room facing the river, he would pay whatever her Christian conscience could bear. He’d reserve a second room on the same floor for him to share with his son, Orlandu. If this arrangement required other patrons to move he would compensate them, via her. If a barefoot boy with a harelip called Grégoire should turn up, he was to be given every courtesy and installed with the others.

  A bargain was struck, as expected a stiff one, but he didn’t haggle.

  He checked the first room and found it satisfactory, its two beds more than ample. From the open window he saw that the rear wall fell to a small vegetable garden. Beyond that lay a narrow, paved quay and the River Seine. He noted that while the sand of the far bank was crammed with beached boats, this bank and its quays were vacant but for two barges moored thirty yards or so to the east.

  Across the river he could indeed see the Place de Grève, where knots of armed men milled about to no apparent purpose. Two wagons were pulled up on the edge of a wharf, both heaped with corpses. Two pairs of men, stripped to the waist and shiny in the sun, slung bodies into the water. Some were small enough to need only one pair of hands.

  He roused the children in the cart to the degree that they could take off their shoes at the door, as Irène insisted, and stumble up the stairs to their beds.

  Tannhauser pulled Juste and Pascale to the privacy of the parlour. They sat at the table and kept their voices low and he explained their situation, which he assured them seemed to him a good one, in the circumstances.

  He told Pascale to wear her gloves in public, even at table, and to excuse it by claiming a dry inflammation of the skin. He decided on a matter that had troubled him: he woul
d once again leave his guns in their keeping, but emphasised at length their dangers and the need to keep them secret from Irène who, he was certain, would either disapprove or extract another fee.

  He gave them some money in small coin.

  He told them about the slabs of opium in the wallets, which they could sell in small pieces to apothecaries for no less than thrice whatever price the latter first offered them.

  He gave them all but one of his double pistoles: four each.

  ‘Keep these secret, too,’ he said. ‘Sew them into your clothes. Each is a half-ounce of pure gold, worth four hundred sols, but unless you’re buying horses they’re too big to spend. To change them into écus d’or or smaller, anyone able to do so will take advantage of your youth, and you may have to go as low as three hundred and sixty, say six écus d’or.’

  ‘Why would we need to change them?’ asked Juste.

  ‘Because he might not come back,’ said Pascale.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Tannhauser. ‘I’ve paid your room and board for three nights. If I’m not back by then, I will be dead or in a prison I’ll not soon get out of. Either eventuality is unlikely, for I’m in the vein.

  ‘In the vein?’ said Pascale.

  ‘The killing vein,’ said Juste, ever helpful.

  ‘In such an unlikely case, assuming you have no powerful allies of whom you’ve kept me in ignorance, and assuming also,’ he gave Pascale a pointed look, ‘that you’ve wisely taken pains to win her respect and affection, you should trust Irène before anyone else, even in matters financial.’

  ‘What about Frogier?’ asked Pascale.

  ‘Frogier has parsnips to butter. Rely on Irène. He’s scared of her.’

  ‘So we’ll be on our own,’ said Juste.

  ‘Others have flourished from stonier beginnings. So can you.’

  ‘What would you do, if you were us?’ asked Pascale.

  ‘I would leave Paris. There’s nothing for you here. They’ll seize your father’s property. Sooner or later they’ll discover you’re the printer’s daughter and they’ll hang you.’

  She nodded, as if this reflected her own calculations. He looked at Juste.

  ‘If I were you, I’d take the printer’s daughters back to Poland.’

  Juste’s mind was momentarily benumbed.

  ‘It’s a long way.’

  ‘And many would be the hands raised against you,’ agreed Tannhauser. ‘But at your age I travelled further and I wasn’t going home. You could flee to some Protestant stronghold, as will many others. La Rochelle. The Netherlands. But all of them are bonfires waiting to be lit. The English aren’t as barbaric as is widely believed, at least on their own soil. My best friend was an Englishman, though he was from the northern lands and as a true barbarian as ever I knew. Or you could get baptised.’

  Pascale said, ‘Why join a Church that would rather burn us?’

  ‘We could make it to Poland if we had Grégoire,’ concluded Juste.

  ‘He would be a mighty asset, but you’ll have to ask him. One last caution. If you do find yourself alone, and facing the long road, leave the Mice here with Irène and give her a double pistole. By the time they’ve eaten that, she’ll have had them working here for years and be loath to lose them. They’re trained to please. They’ll get by.’

  Juste couldn’t contain his dismay. ‘But aren’t they in league with us?’

  ‘Yes, they’re leagued with us, but without me you’ll be a different us, and if you take the Mice, none of you will survive.’

  Pascale did not need convincing. Juste dropped his chin.

  ‘The Mice will never live in the world we do,’ said Tannhauser. ‘They’ve known horrors no living soul should ever know, not even those condemned to the bowels of Perdition. They’ve been used as receptacles for all that is most vile in the human spirit. Their timber has been warped, and it won’t be straightened anywhere this side of Paradise. Despite all that, they have endured. Despite all that, they still have it in them to laugh.’

  Juste pondered on this. He didn’t raise his head. Perhaps he was picturing the Mice as they dragged Tybaut’s corpse to the hospital at the Hôtel-Dieu. Tannhauser pictured it. When such a picture made perfect sense, the world was desperate indeed.

  ‘Let the courage of the Mice be their gift,’ said Tannhauser. ‘To you, to me. We’ll never see it cast in purer form.’

  Juste looked at him.

  ‘You are right. They are the bravest. I take their gift and I will treasure it. But that’s why it feels wrong to leave them behind.’

  ‘Loyalty’s a fine quality, but if its practice kills the loyal, its virtue is dubious.’

  ‘Like my brothers.’

  The example hadn’t occurred to Tannhauser. He nodded. Since Juste had raised the unhappy subject, Tannhauser asked him the question that it prompted.

  ‘Did Dominic Le Tellier play any part in provoking them to the duel?’

  Juste thought about it.

  ‘The guards were laughing at Benedykt and we went over to shut them up. Dominic silenced the guards and told Benedykt that his real dispute was with you. Yes. He assured us that he and his guards wouldn’t interfere in an affair of honour. He said he didn’t know Poland, but that no gentleman of France would allow such an insult to pass.’

  Juste fell silent, as if revisiting the outcome of their pride.

  Tannhauser asked no more. Dominic had tried to get him killed, within minutes of meeting him, and when this failed he had locked him up. He had prevented him protecting Carla. Christian had tried to do the same, by proposing various delays to his journey to the Hôtel D’Aubray. Tannhauser’s arrival had threatened a scheme already in motion. Yet all this was half a day before the King had given orders for the massacre. In the blood and chaos of the dark and the dawn, he had connected the events at the Hôtel D’Aubray to the massacre. Ill-informed logic had entwined the two in his mind. It was clear to him now that the massacre need not be connected to Carla’s murder at all.

  Before he could dwell further, Pascale tried to lift the sombre mood.

  ‘I’d go to Poland. Or England. I bet they both need more printers.’

  ‘Everywhere needs more printers,’ said Tannhauser.

  ‘My father said that that depends on what we print, and that to make a false book is a deed more shameful than murder. I would never print anything that wasn’t true.’

  ‘Well, we know that,’ said Juste.

  ‘On that noble note.’ Tannhauser stood up.

  They showed brave faces but he saw their dread.

  ‘Embrace me and wish me good luck, for I shall need it.’

  They did so and he was replenished.

  He disengaged and walked to the door.

  ‘Earlier you said we’d all lost someone dear,’ said Pascale. ‘Who did you lose?’

  Tannhauser stopped. To tell her was no longer an indulgence. It was the mortar tempered with sorrow and blood that would bind them. He turned.

  ‘Carla, my wife, and our child, who was almost full-grown in her belly. They were murdered in the dark before dawn. As with your father, I got there too late.’

  He felt Pascale’s affection deepen. His own, too.

  Juste said, ‘You said you had to find the culprits. Is that where you’re going?’ He tried to sound encouraging but his anxiety could not be concealed.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Pascale. ‘I worked with my father, I can work with you. You know I can.’

  Tannhauser felt a wave surge from the turbid ocean of feeling, uncharted and seldom navigated, in his chest. He had lost too many he had loved. He had lost too much of what was best in himself. Yet not all of it: for he realised that he loved these children, as truly as he had loved anyone. Even Carla. Even Amparo, and Orlandu, and Bors and Sabato Svi. He turned his face from the burning eyes that adored him.

  ‘A girl can do things you can’t,’ said Pascale, ‘go places you can’t.’

  If he could get Orlandu and
these precious friends out of Paris, what need had he of solving riddles? Carla was dead. Justice was an illusion; revenge no elixir, but a poison. To hunt and punish her killers would comfort only him, and then but briefly. Could he live without that comfort? His chest and neck and fists tightened. His belly told him the truth: comfort was a small price to pay for these precious friends.

  He turned back to look at Pascale. He saw her love. He saw her need. Her need was not to live; she cared not a fig to merely live, and in that he was with her. Her need was to belong. Though it stung the heart of his pride to admit it, he was with her in that, too.

  ‘Culprits without number will go unpunished today,’ he said, ‘and the worst will be richly rewarded, for such is the way of the world. The best of us must rise above these affairs, for we won’t change them.’

  Pascale saw that he believed this, and she saw that it was true. He was glad, for he did believe it, and it was true. Yet the pull of hatred was strong. He saw that she saw that, too. Pascale could see many things in and through him. How strange for such as he to look at a girl as if she were some blurred and distant mirror. Let her see something worth seeing. She needed that, too. So did he. He sensed Carla’s spirit. She agreed with him. He smiled. Pascale smiled in return. With her smile, his chest and neck and fists relaxed, and his mind was settled on what was right.

  ‘I’m going to see that Carla’s remains are secure. I’m going to bring Orlandu here. Grégoire, too. We will work together. The best revenge is to stay alive and flourish.’

  On the street he had a word with Frogier.

  ‘Now that we are known associates, sooner or later Marcel will arrive at you. Tell him nothing of these children. He’s after me, not them, and they have no part to play in our game.’

  ‘What game?’

  ‘I haven’t been apprised of the rules, though the likeliest umpire is Death. Tell Marcel I took the children to the Ville. Tell him he and I will meet in due course. If these children come to harm –’

  Frogier rubbed his tooth. ‘Yes, you will strangle me.’