by Tim Willocks
‘Paul doesn’t like dogs.’
Tannhauser beckoned with his head and they circled the building. They stood in the shadow of the graveyard. The tavern was twenty feet across. Yellow light behind thick glass panes; a heavy door. The upper floors were dark.
‘Where is the bar?’ asked Tannhauser. ‘How many serve behind it?’
‘The bar is on the right. Usually, one man serves behind.’
‘Does the door open in or out?’
‘Out.’
‘How sure can you be that the Pope’s in there?’
‘Paul’s the fattest man in Paris. He never leaves. He sits on a couch at the far end of the room. He has two guards, to help him stand up.’
Tannhauser had dealt with Paul’s sort from Istanbul to Tangiers. Patience was usually in order; tonight he had none. The tavern would be no rough house. Men who liked to fight, and were good at it, didn’t drink together. For a brawl they’d go elsewhere. Tannhauser didn’t expect much to worry him; except women. He had never killed a woman; none had ever given him sufficient cause. He wasn’t sure that sitting in the wrong tavern on the wrong night fitted that bill. He drew a dagger.
‘Hold up those crossbows for me.’
Tannhauser sawed through the strings of the four bundled crossbows.
‘Does Paul run whores?’
‘No. Paul doesn’t like women.’
‘Boys?’
‘Paul doesn’t like children either. Only business and food.’
Tannhauser sheathed his dagger and slotted a bolt into his crossbow.
He heard music. Strings. Singing.
Grégoire said, ‘Paul likes a minstrel of a evening.’
‘He does, does he?’
A minstrel. Tannhauser thought about it.
A man ran up the street. Tannhauser shrank back.
The runner dashed into the Blind Piper, without seeing them.
‘Let’s hope our luck is better than his. Give me that bundle.’
Tannhauser held the armed crossbow in his left hand and took the other four by the handles of the garrote in his right, along with the spontone.
‘Open the door for me, but don’t come in. Wait there. I’ll be a while.’
‘No one ever touches Paul. That’s why he’s the Pope.’
‘It’s time he was unfrocked.’
Grégoire hauled open the door of the Blind Piper.
Tannhauser saw straight down the bar.
The beamed ceiling was low. He would have to mind his head.
At the far end a purple mass, topped by a small pink dome, reclined on a couch, flanked by two human oxen. The runner was bent to Paul’s ear.
Halfway down the room a minstrel sat on a chair and plucked the strings of the harp in his lap as he sang. He had a beautiful voice. His back was to Tannhauser.
Tannhauser stepped inside and the door closed behind him. He propped the spontone by the jamb. At a glance: nine customers at the tables.
They were all of them scum of one kind or other, some finely dressed. Several pairs of eyes took note of the Maltese Cross on his chest. Two of the pairs knew what it meant and who he was. They were expecting him, placed to be behind him, if necessary. Good. If Paul had feared he was coming, Paul had tales to tell. He didn’t let his gaze linger; theirs did. He spotted a senior villain who recognised only the abundance of his weaponry. The villain’s companion looked like a courtier; paying for a frolic on the dark side. The villain alerted two toughs, seated at the next table, with a wag of one finger: wait and see. The toughs didn’t need to be told; they had seen the armed crossbow and hoped to see no more. Three other bravos, seated in the corner, knew Tannhauser, too. When he looked at them, they stared at their beakers of wine.
Tannhauser took two steps and swung the bundle high and let go. The four crossbows landed with a clatter and skated across the flagstones towards Paul. Their severed strings snaked back and forth. If the particular significance of the gesture was lost on most, its general meaning was not.
The minstrel stopped his song. Silence fell.
The two oxen looked at Paul, as if hoping he might produce a thunderbolt. At this distance, Paul’s face was too bloated to betray his fear. His voice did the job.
‘Welcome, chevalier! News of your bold deeds has just reached me.’
Tannhauser tossed his chin at the minstrel.
‘Sing.’
The minstrel turned away and struck a chord. He sang.
Tannhauser drew his sword and held the crossbow clear.
He threw his hips into a backhand and decapitated the minstrel in one.
The severed head hit the flagstones with a dull crack. Gore erupted from the neck stump in all directions. The body remained seated, cradling its harp.
A more profound silence fell. They watched the eruption subside.
Tannhauser turned and walked back to the front door.
‘Christ, he beheaded the minstrel.’
A lively murmur broke out.
Some discussed what the minstrel might have done to deserve it.
Others the morality of allowing the killer to escape.
Tannhauser threw the bolt and locked the door.
The sharp thud brought all speculation to a halt.
Tannhauser turned back round and looked at them.
‘Oh my God,’ said the courtier.
The villain’s toughs read it best. Their only chance was to draw their daggers and charge. He shot the first in the chest as he rose from his table. The quarrel threw him into the wall like a bag of manure. He used the second tough’s momentum to broach him through the upper gut with the sword, then hammered the ricasso with the stock of the crossbow and carved him open to the bladder on the outstroke. The tough groped at his sundered entrails and reeled away.
Their chief made a dash for the door, or perhaps even for the spontone there propped, but his choice would never be known. Tannhauser chopped him through the hamstrings and sent him down, then ran him through beneath the left rear ribs, perforating kidney and bowel. He left him to squirm and looked at the two hired to brace him from behind.
Paul had wasted his money. They hadn’t moved from their stools. Neither had the three scabs in the corner; nor the gawping courtier whose frolic was proving more lively than he’d bargained for. The sense of panic was intense; yet almost silent as each man weighed his options and found them all wanting.
Tannhauser laid the bloody sword across the counter top.
He grounded the stirrup of the crossbow and slotted in his foot, and grabbed the twisted sinews with both hands and drew. He saw the larger of the oxen lumbering down the bar towards him, bellowing and wielding an axe. The second ox advanced behind him, his lesser zeal but little roused by Paul’s high-pitched exhortations.
Tannhauser set the crossbow on its stirrup against the counter. He turned and grabbed the spontone, and turned again and levelled it, right foot forward. He lunged and gored the charging ox so deep beneath the sternum the tips of the wings pierced his ribcage. He let go of the shaft and stepped aside and around the perforated hulk. The ox staggered onward, his axe falling only by virtue of its own weight. To spare damage to the spontone blade, which jutted out between the ox’s shoulders, Tannhauser grabbed him and turned him as he toppled, and the hulk crashed to the floor on his side.
Tannhauser turned to see the second ox in full retreat towards Paul. A wine jug sailed through the air and Tannhauser swayed backwards from the waist. The jug smashed against the counter. He retrieved his sword. To his left the young courtier had drawn a rapier. Terror gave him the courage to use it. He advanced as taught by his fencing master, the long blade poised with admirable elegance. As the predicted thrust came, Tannhauser stepped across and in, and hacked the courtier’s neck unto the spine. The courtier fell and convulsed and gargled in the minstrel’s slops.
Tannhauser stepped back to the counter.
He exchanged the sword for the crossbow and slotted a bolt to the nut.
&nbs
p; The second ox, ignoring his pope’s frantic commands, dragged the luckless runner away from the back door, and assumed the latter’s task of trying to open it.
Tannhauser took aim and shot him. The bolt struck the ox below the nape and to the left of his backbone. It flattened him into the door and nailed him choking thereon, his hands swatting the timbers in feeble spasms.
Tannhauser drew the crossbow and laid it up. No else came at him. No one else would. If any had imagined they had a chance, they knew they hadn’t taken it. They had reduced themselves to their last chance, which was to hope that he would have mercy. He took his sword and flicked the blood from the blade and sheathed it. The villain by the door was still moaning with the pain of his wounds. Tannhauser put a foot on the dead ox and stooped and heaved the spontone from his thorax. He spiked the villain through the temple with the counterweight.
He surveyed the room.
Aside from Paul and the runner, who was trying to get past the flailing bulk of the second ox to unbolt the back door, there were five men left.
The two bravos who had spotted him still sat rigid at their table, as if hoping this might make them invisible. The other three stood in a group against the rear wall. They were all gibbering at Tannhauser in great earnest, but he didn’t hear them. Two of the three separated themselves from the third, whose terror increased. They identified him as the jug-thrower, and swore on the souls of their mothers that they had only dropped into the Piper for a quiet drink. Their several unsheathed knives and the maces propped by their stools argued otherwise, but it would have made no difference. There was nothing left but butchery.
One by one, Tannhauser lanced all five with the spontone. He did it cleanly; one thrust apiece through the heart, and where necessary the hands clasped thereto. First the two bravos at the table, who had favoured their own skins over Paul’s. They kept their seats until the end, as if survival might be won by good manners. Then those who claimed unto the last to be peaceable drinkers and devout Catholics; then the alleged jug-thrower. He found another man on the floor behind the bar, hiding beneath a gantry of wine casks.
Tannhauser lanced him, too.
He collected the crossbow and walked to where Paul sat quivering on his papal throne. He propped the spontone on the wall. He fitted a bolt to the crossbow and laid it, trigger up, on a table. He marked the runner, who had crammed himself into a corner. The man held a knife for comfort, though it brought him none. His eyes were wide, his brain boiling with too many thoughts to think, and none of which would profit him.
Tannhauser looked at Paul. He had seen fatter men, in Egypt, but only one or two. Paul’s face was shiny in the lamplight. His eyes were fixed on Tannhauser’s chest and he was taking fast, short breaths through pursed lips, as if he were trying to whistle and making a poor job of it. The boil in his brain needed to be cooled, too.
‘I’m Mattias Tannhauser. I take it you’re the local pontiff.’
Paul didn’t respond. He wasn’t able to respond. Behind him, the nailed ox wheezed his master’s name like a frightened child. He sprayed blood on the door with each gasp.
‘Paul . . . Paul . . .’
Tannhauser stepped around the couch and looked at the runner.
‘Drop the knife.’
The runner dropped the knife.
‘You’ve been to the chapel. Apart from the dead, what did you see?’
‘I saw the Infant. I followed him there. Paul told me to. Sire.’
‘The Infant?’
‘Grymonde.’ The runner panted on every other word. ‘Grymonde went in the chapel. He stayed inside, it seemed like a long time, then he came out of the priest’s house and stood in the street. You can’t read Grymonde. I can’t. He headed north, towards the Temple. Then I looked in the church and saw the dead men, all laid out like hares, and I ran back here.’
‘Good. Now stand behind Paul and put your hands on his shoulders.’
‘Paul . . . Paul . . .’
The runner ignored the ox, as did they all, and did as he was told.
Tannhauser drew the lapis lazuli dagger and put a hand on the nape of the messenger’s neck. It was clammy. The man was trembling. Tannhauser thought about Carla. And what criminals like these had done to her.
‘This isn’t necessary,’ said Paul. ‘This isn’t how things are done round here.’
‘Have a heart, sire,’ panted the runner. ‘I’m deaf in one ear.’
Tannhauser cut the runner’s throat and held him upright while he drained onto Paul’s head. Paul squealed and spluttered. He vomited on his great purple belly.
Tannhauser let the body drop.
‘Paul . . . Paul . . .’
‘For God’s sake, man, could you at least keep Maurice quiet?’
Tannhauser looked at the ox, still exhaling blood onto the door. The tin fletchings were twisted, wedged between his upper ribs. The head of the bolt was buried in the wood but had missed the lethal vessels and organs. Tannhauser stabbed Maurice behind the collarbone. Without his legs to support his weight, Maurice broke off the shaft at the bolt head and slid to the floor.
‘Thank you,’ said Paul.
Tannhauser took the chair facing Paul. Paul’s face was a glistening red mask. Blood trickled down the great rolls of fat that enshrouded him. He wiped his eyes and blinked.
‘Did you have to kill the minstrel?’
Tannhauser saw his intelligence surface through his fear.
‘Where’s my wife?’
‘I will gladly tell you where to find Carla when you understand why killing me would run against your interests.’
‘What state is she in?’
‘I assure you she hasn’t been harmed. At least, not yet.’
‘Is she held for ransom?’
‘If only she were,’ said Paul. ‘A piece of the purse would be mine. But don’t despair, you’ve come to the right man. If we pool our respective talents, which in sum would be a most remarkable power, I’m certain a happy outcome can be achieved.’
‘Your vanity exceeds your intelligence.’
‘It’s takes neither vanity nor intelligence to say that you need me.’
‘I’m told you love business, so here’s the bargain.’ Tannhauser nodded at the crossbow. ‘Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll put that bolt through your skull.’
‘I’ve entertained better offers.’
‘Fat doesn’t bleed overmuch. I could carve off two or three stone and it would still take a week for the putrefaction to finish you. I’d add your tongue and your fingers, too, though by then you’d be too crazed to speak my name.’
‘Your name’s already spoken, all over town,’ said Paul. ‘Carve away if it will please you, as seems likely. I’d answer your questions and you’d learn the things you want to know. But you wouldn’t learn the things you need to know, because you don’t know how to ask for them.’
‘I’ve known men who can defy pain. You aren’t one of them.’
Tannhauser stood up and drew his dagger.
Paul raised his bloody hands.
‘Wait. We all know the legend of the knight who played chess with Death. Well, I may be playing for my life, but you’re playing for Carla’s. You can’t afford a wrong move at this stage of the game.’
Tannhauser didn’t sit down. He nodded at Paul to go on.
‘This affair had a bad smell from the start –’
‘When did Christian hire you?’
Paul licked the blood on his lips, as if he’d just lost one of his pieces.
‘This afternoon.’
‘For the D’Aubray murders, not mine. You’re the murder man, aren’t you?’
‘A week ago. Christian only told me the particulars of what they wanted, not the why. Perhaps the lickspittle didn’t know himself. But I could see the why right off.’
‘Light the fuse. Start a war.’
Paul reassessed him yet again.
‘Very good. Naturally, I was tempted. There’s a lot of money to
be made from a war, especially if you’re one of the few who knows it’s coming. I asked a princely fee to test their ardour. They didn’t quibble. By then, I couldn’t back out, they’d have lost trust in me. These aren’t your usual criminals, though I’m not certain who they are. My sources in the Louvre are weak, I admit. And militants aren’t my clientele.’
‘The Pilgrims of Saint-Jacques. Marcel Le Tellier.’
Paul was even more impressed.
‘I suspected as much. Plenty would like to see that Caesar fall.’
‘He will. And your game goes badly. You’ve told me nothing worth knowing.’
‘I can tell you how and where to hide, you and your wife. When these riots are over, when Le Tellier has been ruined, I can still the troubled waters. I can get you safely out of Paris. Better still, you could stay and get rich with me.’
‘Hiding doesn’t suit my temperament. Carla’s neither.’
Tannhauser stabbed Paul sideways through his fat. The sensation was peculiar. Paul shrieked. Tannhauser shoved the dagger in up to the quillions and left it in place. The blade was a good foot from anything vital. He sat down and watched him quiver.
‘You sent Grymonde to the chapel to bolster your bravos.’
‘Nobody sends the Infant anywhere. He went to warn you that they were there.’
Tannhauser chewed on that but couldn’t swallow it.
‘Why?’
‘Because he is mad, as are you.’
Tannhauser stood up again.
‘Grymonde is in love with your wife.’
By the time Tannhauser took this in, he realised it didn’t much surprise him. Carla was pregnant, and very far from being a seductress; she despised such wiles; but the power of her allure ran from depths that could not be fathomed. She had tamed the lion. Grymonde had spared her. Carla had sent him to find Tannhauser. It would not win Grymonde his life, but Tannhauser felt some affinity with the man. He knew the kind of love Carla could inspire; even if he himself had lately proved unworthy of it.
‘You hired Grymonde for the murders.’
‘Christian asked for him, in particular. The job was meant to draw attention and he’d been told the Infant wouldn’t care, which he didn’t. The Infant would never have worked out that he was going to start a war. On the other hand, if he had, he would have been glad to.’