by Tim Willocks
‘Gobbo fell?’
With the same two fingers Altan mimed the draw and release of a bowstring.
‘He fell, yes.’
Altan jerked Estelle’s arms. He gave her a look that said he would kill her if he deemed it necessary. Estelle understood such looks. She stopped struggling.
‘Is he alive?’ asked Carla.
‘He talks. Now he is dead. More men come.’
‘How many more?’
Altan hesitated.
‘Tell me.’
Altan spread the fingers of his free hand. His palm was smeared with dried blood. On his thumb he wore an ivory ring. Five. Carla felt queasy as he closed and opened the hand again. Altan spread his fingers a third time.
‘Fifteen?’ Carla wondered how he knew, but didn’t ask. ‘Is it true?’
Altan shrugged. ‘I demand many times.’ He mimed cutting with a knife. ‘I say: More? Less? He say, fifteen. Always.’
Carla looked at Estelle. The girl had followed what had passed. She dropped her gaze. Carla took this for confirmation. She turned back to Altan.
‘Where is Madame D’Aubray?’
Altan put the back of his hand to his cheek and tilted his head.
‘We must give them what they want,’ said Carla. ‘We will collect all our valuables and leave them in the street outside.’
Estelle said, ‘You’re the lady from the south.’
Carla felt her scalp prickle. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Grymonde wants you. The lady from the south.’
Carla realised her hands were cradling her child. He was still.
‘Why does he want me?’
‘Grymonde will kill you all. Then he will take everything. The tables, the chairs, the clothes, the food, the candles, and all the gold.’
Again, Estelle seemed to be quoting as if from a speech.
‘Why does Grymonde want me? How does he know about me?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t you?’
‘I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?’
‘Grymonde is the king of thieves, the king of us all. All the Ville is afraid of Grymonde. The police. The assassins. The pigs of the palace. He’s my dragon.’
Carla was seized by another contraction of her womb. She closed her eyes. She used the pain to focus her thoughts. Estelle was infatuated with this criminal, this Grymonde, and no doubt exaggerated his power; yet no doubt he had power enough. She put her hands on her belly and felt her child through the tightened muscles. He gave her strength. The throng passed. She reassured herself that this was not labour. Her waters were intact. It was normal. She looked at Altan.
‘Can we run?’
Estelle answered for him.
‘The rich think these houses belong to them – but not tonight they don’t. And the streets of Paris belong always to us. We can take them whenever we want.’
This, too, sounded like a quotation from a harangue.
Estelle added, ‘Where will you run to?’
‘Then we must hold on here until the sergents come to help us.’
‘The sergents won’t come. They’re cowards. And Grymonde has promised them a fifth, but be sure, he’ll give them only a tenth.’
Carla thought of the four children sleeping next door. She had played music with them every day since her arrival. She had grown to love them. Their mother, Symonne, was more remote, still trapped in loss, but she had given over her home to Carla and Carla was fond of her. Despite Estelle’s conviction, Carla did not believe that this Grymonde meant to kill her. There was no sense to the idea. There was no logic, let alone passion, to drive such a murder, nor any profit. If even a shadow of what Estelle said was true, then a man, a leader, like Grymonde must be a man of reason, or at least of greed. Carla was worth a decent ransom. She would face him and tell him so.
She had faced dangerous men before.
She had married the most dangerous man she had ever met.
‘You say Grymonde wants me. So he doesn’t want to hurt my friends, the other people here.’
‘Of course he does, they’re heretics. Tonight all the heretics will die and they’ll go to Hell, every single one, even the children.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This is a Huguenot house. All the Huguenots of Paris must be killed, by the order of the King.’
Carla was aware of the hatred in which the city was steeped, but this was inconceivable. Not a week ago she had watched the King give his sister in marriage to Henri of Navarre. The King and his mother wanted peace and conciliation. Besides, there weren’t enough soldiers in Paris to accomplish so vast and heinous a task.
‘Grymonde told you this?’
‘A spy from the palace told Grymonde. You can’t save your friends.’
Carla did not know what to believe.
‘The time goes,’ said Altan Savas. ‘The bad men come.’
Carla mastered the tide of fear that rose within her. She felt Altan watching her. She could not fight as he could, but she could ease his burden. She could take command. She knew what Mattias would expect from her. She wondered if she would ever see him again. And there lay her first task: to exclude all those many thoughts that would make her weaker. She indicated Estelle to Altan.
‘Let the girl go. Put her outside the door.’
Altan pursed his lips beneath his moustache. ‘Please. I kill her.’
‘There is nothing she can tell Grymonde that he doesn’t already know.’
‘She sees us. The house. Kill her. Or keep her.’
‘I don’t want another child in the house, especially in a fight.’
‘She is no child. She is the enemy.’
‘I will not give you permission to murder a child. No, Altan. No.’
‘A battle comes.’
‘Then you make your preparations. And I will make mine.’
‘We go, now,’ he said.
He pointed at Carla, then at himself. His fingers mimicked walking away.
‘You, me.’ He pointed at her belly. ‘The boy of Mattias.’
‘You mean abandon the others? Symonne, the children?’
He made a spacious horizontal circle with his free hand, then slashing gestures.
‘Outside, you, alone, I can defend, in the street, yes. With the bow, the sword. They are not soldiers. Thieves. But the others? The women, the children? Too many. Many, many. Too many. In here?’ He shrugged and grimaced. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I will not abandon those children.’
Carla said it without thinking because it was the thing that everything she believed in, everything she believed about herself, expected her to say, provoked her to say. Yet at once she regretted it. Having said it, she couldn’t retract it.
Altan started towards the door, dragging Estelle with him, then stopped, his ear cocked. He went to the window at the back of the house and listened. He looked at Carla. Carla now heard the sound too: the toll of a bell, rolling across the city from the south-west. The sound filled her heart with an inexplicable dread.
Estelle said, ‘You see? You’re all going to die.’
CHAPTER FIVE
The Rat Girl
AS THE MAD Turk Altan dragged Estelle downstairs, she took in every detail to report to Grymonde. She knew that the thieves could not be kept outside for long.
The house was built with too many windows and none of them were barred or even shuttered. The rich put sheets on their windows, as if they were too grand to need protection. At the second-floor landing the stairway doubled back on itself and bent down towards the front door hallway. To the left at the ground level was a room full of desks and big books. To the right was the kitchen. Each had a shorter, higher window to stop people peering in from the street. Through the kitchen door she saw a quiver of arrows and a strange foreign bow laid out on a table.
Moonlight filled the hallway from the windows in the stairwell on each floor. Towards the rear of the house, black blood was pooled and smeared on the hallway floor. She
guessed it was Gobbo’s.
Altan grabbed her hair and lifted her from the ground.
Estelle squirmed and kicked at his thighs. She knew he wanted to kill her but she remembered madame’s order and she knew Altan would obey. She also knew Altan was right: he should kill her. Estelle liked madame, the lady from the south. Carla? She was sorry Grymonde would kill her.
Estelle screamed as Altan threw her down and rubbed her face in the gore. It was still warm, thick and greasy. She clamped her lips tight but the blood went up her nostrils and she was forced to breathe. The blood clung to the inside of her throat and she coughed and opened her mouth and breathed in more. She couldn’t scream any more.
She was going to die in Gobbo’s blood.
Altan hauled her upright. Coughs racked her. She retched blood. She was blinded but Altan held her wrists and she couldn’t wipe her eyes. He shook her by the hair. She tried to spit at him. He slapped her face again, hard, but not as hard as Gobbo had hit her in the street. He pulled open the back door of the house.
‘Look,’ said Altan.
He twisted her around to face the outside of the door. A cord was strung from a wrought iron knocker twice the size of her fist. The knocker was fashioned in the shape of a bee. The end of the cord was looped around Gobbo’s neck. Gobbo was dead and he was naked. His broken legs were canted at strange angles. Both were covered in stripes of blood that ran from the black hole tufted by his pubic hair. His eyeballs bulged at the moon. He’d been stabbed in the chest. Shoved into Gobbo’s mouth were his severed cock and balls.
Estelle lived with Gobbo. He and his brother, Joco, slept in the same bed as her mother, Typhaine, though Estelle didn’t think she let them swive her, at least not unless she was drunk, which wasn’t very often any more. Estelle had never liked either of them. She only liked Grymonde. She loved Grymonde. Grymonde was her dragon.
She looked at Gobbo’s bleeding corpse and felt no pity. She wondered if Altan had cut his cock and balls off before he died. She hoped so.
Altan shoved her into the courtyard. He pointed at Gobbo.
In his strange voice he said, ‘Tell your master: come and see! Come and see!’
Estelle stumbled across the yard towards the alleys beyond. She saw movement there. That was where most of them were hiding – Altan must know it – waiting for her to open the door. Instead they would be looking at Gobbo and getting afraid. Afraid of the mad Turk who had hung him on the door and cut his balls off.
Grymonde would not be afraid. He didn’t know how to be.
Altan was as vicious as a cornered rat, and as clever. But he did not know that no matter how much the others were afraid of him, and his bloody door, they would always be more afraid of Grymonde. Estelle was afraid, too. She had failed her dragon.
She scrubbed Gobbo’s blood from her face with the skirt of her smock. She thought of her rats. Her rats would lick her clean. She promised herself she would bring her rats to feast on Altan’s corpse.
CHAPTER SIX
The Gentle of Spirit
TANNHAUSER AWOKE TO some obscure sound and swung to his feet with his dagger. A spasm knifed his back and he blasphemed. He grabbed his sword. The atmosphere was stifling. After the darkness of his dreams the glow from the open door was sufficient to see by.
He walked into the parlour where the candles had burned down to their nubs. He saw a platter of bread and meat and a jug of wine on the table. Someone had been in and out while he slept. The lock in the front door scraped and he realised he had been woken by the jangle of keys. The door opened to reveal the night guard. Behind him stood Grégoire and Arnauld de Torcy. Something had changed in Arnauld since that afternoon. His youth had vanished.
‘The madness has begun.’
‘What madness?’
‘With luck, you can make use of it. Hurry.’
Tannhauser cut a wedge of mutton. He ate as he returned to the bedroom. He pulled on his boots and his black linen shirt, the white cross spattered with blood. He buckled on his belt and sheathed his weapons. As he turned back to the door he saw for the first time that there was a second bed, or, rather, a low pallet, in the room. It lay in an alcove, against the far wall. Under a damp sheet lay a body. The body lay with his face to the wall and shivered in the gloom, as if some ague were shaking his bones. Tannhauser hoped it wasn’t catching. He returned to the parlour and rifled a pint of wine down his throat and cut another slice of meat. He joined his saviours in the corridor.
‘The frock for the baby,’ said Grégoire. ‘I left it in there.’
Tannhauser swallowed the mutton. ‘Go and get it.’
Grégoire dashed inside the cell.
‘What time is it?’
‘Almost four,’ said Arnauld. ‘The screams of the King have been terrible to hear.’
‘Why? Did he lose a game of tennis?’
Arnauld was not amused.
‘This is a darker night than you can imagine. Your creature was arrested trying to climb into a second-floor window of the Pavillon du Roi, from the building works of the new South Wing.’
‘He’s a resourceful lad.’
‘He was lucky not to be killed before I was called.’
‘You’ve earned my eternal friendship, a treasure few can claim. Why was I arrested?’
‘I have no idea.’
Arnauld glanced back into the cell for some sign of Grégoire.
Tannhauser went back inside. The robe was precious only in sentiment. He saw Grégoire going into the bedroom with the water jug in his hands. Crumpled under his arm was the cloth package.
‘Grégoire, what are you doing?’
‘The other prisoner asked for water in his sleep.’
‘Let the other prisoner be damned.’
A parched groan drifted from the bedroom.
Tannhauser grabbed a candle, snatched the jug from Grégoire and plunged into the room. He hoped he was wrong. He set the light down by the pallet. He rolled the prisoner onto his back.
‘Orlandu.’
Somewhere beyond the windowless walls a bell began to toll.
Orlandu’s cheeks were sunken beneath a clammy brow. Tannhauser thumbed his eyes open. They were socketed too deep in his skull. His pupils were shrunken to dots. He showed no sign of awareness. Tannhauser slid an arm beneath his shoulders. Through the saturated shirt, he could feel Orlandu’s body burning. Opium and fever. He raised him up and Orlandu groaned. Tannhauser put the jug to his lips and poured. Orlandu swallowed.
Tannhauser set the jug down and lowered Orlandu back to the pallet. He stripped away the wet sheet, which released a whiff of putrefaction. Orlandu was fully dressed. The left sleeve of his shirt had been cut away and his arm was bandaged from elbow to armpit. Tannhauser ran his fingertips over the bandage. It was stained brown and boggy to the touch. The bandage was wrapped too tight; the arm had swollen grossly. At either edge of the dressing the exposed skin was fiery and tense with the spreading corruption. Tannhauser felt Orlandu’s neck and found lumps beneath the jaw. A mortifying wound; perhaps even gangrene. If the poisonous humours spread to the blood, they could kill the strongest man within hours. Arnauld arrived.
‘The tocsin has sounded. We must go.’
‘Fetch the guard.’
Tannhauser looked down on Orlandu. The putrefaction had to be drained, the rotten flesh trimmed. The arm might even require amputation. Arnauld returned with the guard.
‘Tell me your name.’
The guard shuffled. ‘Jean, sire.’
‘Tell me, Jean, when did Captain Le Tellier bring this prisoner here?’
‘Yesterday evening, sire.’ He frowned in thought. ‘That is, Friday evening, not Saturday.’
Thirty hours since. And it was Le Tellier.
‘And the prisoner was already wounded.’
‘He was as you see him, sire. That is, his wound had been dressed, though he has taken much more poorly since last night. That is, early Saturday morning.’
‘Did you
call help?’
‘Oh yes, sire. A physician attended him and left that potion.’
Jean pointed to the floor beneath the bed. A small bottle lay there, its glass stopper uncorked. The bottle was empty, its essence fled. Tannhauser picked it up and licked the rim. Tincture of opium. He threw the bottle at Jean. It bounced from his face and shattered.
‘A physician? The lad needs a surgeon.’
Jean cringed at this injustice. Tannhauser leaned over him.
‘If he dies, you will answer to Anjou, who holds him most dear.’
The name dwarfed any authority Dominic Le Tellier might wield.
‘What should I do, sire?’
‘Can you spare two men to carry him?’
‘All the guards are called to arms. I’m holding the night watch alone.’
‘Help me get him over my shoulder.’
The bell continued to toll.
As they stalked the ill-lit corridors of the East Wing Tannhauser was grateful for the opium. Without it Orlandu would have found the journey unendurable; in the event, he hardly stirred.
‘Tell me where to find Ambroise Paré.’
‘The King’s surgeon?’ said Arnauld.
‘He treated Coligny. He must be nearby.’
‘At the King’s request Paré is lodging with Coligny, at the Hôtel Béthizy.’
‘How far is that?’
‘From the gate, ten minutes on foot, but it’s not possible –’
‘My son is dying.’
‘The streets will be impassable. The killing is about to begin.’
Tannhauser felt his bowels shift. Arnauld stopped and opened a door.
‘Coligny is to be murdered – along with his brethren. See.’
Arnauld led them into a room that looked out from the east face of the building and opened a window. Beyond the hôtels on the far side of the square stood the church whose bell was ringing. To the north of the church, a mixed column of troops, bearing torches, wound through the streets, roughly parallel to the river. At their head were two score horsemen, followed by squads of arquebusiers, their match cords pinpoints of red. At the rear came the hedged blades of the halberdiers.