Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

‘Estelle,’ said Carla. ‘Did you come down the chimney again?’

  ‘No, I climbed up a chimney. Where’s Grymonde?’

  ‘He’s out,’ said Alice. ‘And if you’re coming in here you’ll not escape a wash.’

  Estelle submitted while Alice removed her belt and pulled her smock over her face and used it to swab up the worst of the loose soot from her long ringlets. Alice bundled the smock and threw it out of the window, ignoring the protest from below. She took a linen towel used earlier and wrapped the girl’s hair in a turban. Most of the fallen soot was confined outside the door.

  ‘This is a special place, so mind your manners,’ said Alice. ‘Now, save this old woman’s back and put that basin of water on the floor, go on. Don’t spill it.’

  Estelle tiptoed into the room. She saw Amparo in Carla’s arms and stopped.

  ‘Is that your new baby?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a little girl.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Amparo.’

  ‘I never heard that name before.’

  ‘When you’re clean, you can say hello to her. You’ll be her very first friend.’

  ‘Her first friend ever?’

  ‘Her first friend ever, in all the world.’

  Estelle lifted the wide pewter basin from the table and set it on the floor. The water wasn’t fresh, but that hardly mattered. Estelle stood in it with great solemnity. As Alice prepared to struggle down to her knees, Carla stood up and offered Amparo.

  ‘Please, let me do it, I feel fine.’

  Alice didn’t resist. She took the baby and Carla knelt by Estelle and washed her from the neck down with a soaped cloth. It was the first bath the girl had had in some time. There were sores on her skin, as well as the new scratches. When her hands were clean, Estelle leaned on Carla’s shoulders for balance. The hands felt good.

  ‘You’ll have to find a better way of coming and going than by the chimney.’

  ‘I hate the chimney, but the sergent was sitting by the front door and the window was too high. He ate all our soup and fell asleep. I hate him, too. I hate them all.’

  ‘Well, there’s no one to hate here. We’re all good friends.’

  ‘Is Grymonde your friend?’

  ‘Yes, Grymonde has become my friend. He’s a good friend to have.’

  ‘He takes me flying.’

  ‘That must be wonderful,’ said Carla.

  ‘It is. But you like the chevalier better than you like Grymonde, don’t you?’

  Carla stopped and looked at her. She remembered the jealousy in Estelle’s eyes, the pain at her expulsion. The jealousy was gone; in its place was a terrible need. Carla’s heart clenched. There was no doubt in her mind. Estelle was Grymonde’s daughter.

  It was not because she saw Grymonde in Estelle’s face, but because she saw Alice in Estelle’s eyes. Wild and grey as the sea, and as deeply wounded. The urge to cry rose in Carla’s throat. She swallowed. She wanted to look at Alice, but didn’t. The chevalier? She wrung out the cloth. She wanted to wipe her brow, but cloth and water both were now so filthy she used the back of her arm. Her thoughts were blurred by emotion. She took refuge in practicalities.

  ‘Step out of the basin, Estelle. We’ll use fresh water for your face.’

  Estelle stepped out of the basin and Carla used the bed to lever herself to her feet. She stooped to pick up the basin but Estelle reached it first.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ She carried the basin to the window. ‘Below!’

  Estelle dumped the water, provoking more oaths. She carried the basin back and Carla put it on the table and poured fresh water from a jug. She looked for a clean cloth.

  ‘You said the chevalier. Do you mean my husband, Mattias?’

  ‘You do like him the most, don’t you?’ nodded Estelle, afraid of Carla’s answer.

  ‘Yes, of course I like Mattias the most. I love him. But how do you know of him?’

  ‘Petit Christian said the chevalier would give Grymonde a lot of gold if he would let you go home, so I told him you were here. But he’s a liar, they’re all liars. He called me a Judas and I’m not a Judas, so I escaped to tell Grymonde, and you.’

  ‘So you didn’t see Mattias, the chevalier?’

  ‘No,’ said Estelle. ‘They just talked about him.’

  ‘They? Who else was there?’

  ‘My mother and Joco.’

  ‘Joco from this morning?’

  Estelle nodded. ‘You made Grymonde hurt him, without saying so.’

  ‘Does Petit Christian work at the Louvre, for the Queen?’

  ‘I don’t know. The people he works for are bad. He’s a poison toad.’

  Carla found the cloth and twisted it in her hands. She wasn’t safe any more, but the feeling was distant because so much else was close. Her body. Her fatigue. Her joy. Her baby. Alice.

  ‘Carla? Let this old woman wash Estelle’s face, if you please.’

  Alice offered Amparo. Carla took the babe and hugged her. Amparo was asleep. Carla’s breasts ached. She saw Alice study Estelle with great intensity, with her essence as much as her eyes. Estelle shrank back. Alice sat on the bed and beckoned her.

  ‘Don’t be frightened of this old girl, Estelle. You want your beautiful face to be nice and clean for when Grymonde gets home, don’t you?’

  ‘Is he coming home?’

  ‘Grymonde always comes home. He’s my son.’

  ‘He’s my dragon.’

  Estelle smiled. Carla couldn’t remember seeing her smile before. It was Grymonde’s smile, a little mad, and as big as her heart. Alice sighed, all her pain and all her stolen joy in that sound. She patted her lap for Estelle to sit on it. Estelle did so, her blackened face alive beneath the soiled white turban.

  ‘I didn’t know Grymonde had a mother,’ she said.

  ‘Everyone has a mother, love. Even a dragon.’

  Alice soaped and dipped the cloth. She hesitated. For one to whom flesh gave up its inmost secrets, she seemed almost afraid, as if Estelle might disappear if she touched her. Carla understood. She held Amparo to her cheek and watched as another moment of eternity unfolded before her. Alice began to wipe the soot from Estelle’s face. She touched her skin with tenderness and passion, rinsing after each stroke, as if each stroke were a treasure worth a lifetime of anguish, as if with each stroke that anguish, like the soot, was wiped away.

  Carla’s fears were banished by something more potent, more enduring, than earthly woes. Something mystical. Amparo opened her eyes and cooed and Carla turned her around so that she could watch, too.

  ‘Grymonde lifts me on his shoulders and we fly,’ explained Estelle, between wipes. ‘His shoulders are the highest place in Paris, higher than everyone, and he takes me wherever I want. I pull on his ears to tell him which way to go and he roars fire out of his mouth. And everyone gets out of our way and they all wish they were me, because I’m the only girl in the world who can fly with the dragon. Is my face clean yet?’

  ‘Not yet, love.’

  ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘Because I’m happy.’

  Estelle looked at Carla. ‘Are you happy, too?’

  Carla realised her own tears were falling. She nodded.

  ‘I only cry when I’m sad,’ said Estelle.

  ‘Sad tears are good. Happy tears are better,’ said Alice.

  Alice wiped the soot from Estelle’s lip, and from her nostrils, and from her ears. She told her to close her eyes and wiped her eyelids and lashes. She looked at her.

  ‘You are her. You are you. Can I put my arms around you?’

  Estelle looked at Carla for reassurance. Carla nodded.

  ‘If you like,’ said Estelle.

  Alice embraced her. Carla saw her searching within the great realms of her knowing, questioning herself, searching for the truth, for the right. She was ready to deny herself her own just claim, despite that that claim – that recognition – would have healed every wound she carried. It was with the wisdom
of that denial that she struggled. She was trying to see beyond her own desires to what Estelle most needed. She looked at Carla.

  ‘The other, you know, lady, told him the babe wasn’t his. That’s how she got rid of him. Said it was some high-born gentleman, who would give her money, though, if he did, no one ever saw it. By then he was starting to change – his teeth, his for’head – and she was ashamed of having anything to do with him. Perhaps for him it was easier to believe it than not. But this woman knows one thing, he loved that babe from the moment she was born.’

  ‘He loves her still,’ said Carla. ‘Would you like me to tell her?’

  ‘This woman drew a card for the babe that day. The Twilight of the Morning. The circle and the square, the red and the white, the past and the future, Hope and Faith. The stillness after the storm.’

  ‘The Star,’ said Carla.

  Estelle had listened to every word. If she didn’t understand what had been said, she knew she was the subject. Her gaze was on Carla.

  ‘You saw the spread this morning,’ said Alice. ‘She might not have him long.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s a reason to be truthful.’

  ‘Perhaps he is wiser than we are. A parent is just a parent. But a dragon?’

  Carla remembered something Mattias had told her about Orlandu. When he had first told the boy, in the inferno of Saint Elmo’s, that he had come to reunite him with his mother, Orlandu had been so hurt, so angry, that he had forsaken Mattias’s friendship, for a while. Orlandu had believed the mighty Tannhauser had chosen him as a friend for his own qualities, not because he was someone’s son. That there was another reason for that choice, a dull, practical reason, had robbed him of his pride.

  ‘The one abandoned her,’ said Carla. ‘The other chose her.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Estelle.

  ‘We’re talking about you, Estelle,’ said Alice. ‘You are the Morning Star, the brightest in the sky. That’s why Grymonde chose you.’

  Estelle searched Alice’s face for a long time.

  ‘Grymonde calls me La Rossa. Can we wash my hair for him?’

  Washing and perfuming Estelle’s hair cost Alice more effort than Carla’s childbirth, but every moment was a delight to both participants. Carla confined her contribution to fetching the pails of water that the silent Hugon brought to the door, while Amparo lay on her back on the bed. By the end Carla was soaked.

  She fed Amparo again and changed back into her pale gold frock. It hung about her hips in baggy folds. She put her hands on her stomach. She was sore down below and her insides were tender, still prone to short pangs. She was very tired. Moments of near ecstasy alternated with deep sadness.

  She started to worry about Petit Christian.

  She paced with Amparo in her arms.

  In searching for her, Mattias would have started with Christian. While rewarding her abductors would offend his principles, he would pay any price to get her back. Where his principles would not have bent was on being there in person, to control such negotiations. Why was Christian discussing ransom with the likes of Joco? Don’t trust the Louvre, Grymonde had said. He didn’t know who had hired him to kill her.

  She realised Petit Christian had hired him. Not on his own account, but on behalf of some powerful other. Nausea rolled through her. The invitation to the wedding. The long journey to Paris. The music. It had all been a sham. They had brought her all this way to kill her. And then they had waited almost two weeks and butchered a whole family.

  Why?

  She felt her legs shake. She stopped by the window and leaned on the sill. And watched the gaiety around the cook fires below. Did Christian’s master have the power to come here, to the Yards? They were talking to Joco. About money. Grymonde would not betray her. But anyone else in the Yards could be bought for a clean shirt.

  She could not take to the streets. Grymonde might return any moment; he might even bring Mattias. As the strange dreaminess of her labour wore off, she yearned for him more and more. She had been right, that morning, to feel that he was close.

  He was close.

  He was coming.

  She saw his face in her mind’s eye. The face of a Mattias who knew her to be in peril. His blue eyes. More than they gave comfort, the eyes frightened her. She thought she had known what he was capable of. She had fallen in love with him while watching him torture and kill a helpless priest. The picture in her mind was of a man who was capable of deeds she could not imagine; who would violate any boundary of morality or honour, even his own; who would scar his soul to its core; for her. She loved him. She wanted him. He frightened her. She turned away from the window, confused.

  She looked at Amparo. At the perfection of her absolute innocence. How could the man in the picture have helped to make her? She turned to Alice. She needed her counsel. But she could not bring herself to sully Alice’s joy. And because, in some sense, Alice had entered her, and had awakened things she had always known but never dared know, she knew what that counsel would be.

  The room is full of love.

  Here, now, is love.

  The choice is love or fear.

  Alice looked at her and Carla smiled.

  A frock of sorts was fashioned for Estelle from a blue silk chemise that Alice had not worn in twenty years. Carla found a pair of combs in her valise. Estelle basked in the admiration with which she was showered, and which Carla sensed was foreign to her experience. Carla picked up Amparo and felt faint and stepped to the windowsill to steady herself. She felt Alice behind her, her hands around her waist.

  ‘We’ve put you through too much, love. Come and lie down.’

  ‘A dizzy spell, let me wait until it passes.’

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. Her strength returned. She looked down from the window and caught a glimpse of Antoinette. The girl was blindfolded and chasing among a gang of children, trying to catch one. She was laughing. She seemed to have changed all her clothes except for the beret with the white cross. Carla felt less guilty for neglecting her all day.

  The feast was well advanced. There must have been over fifty people in the yard, milling around the remains of a pig spitted above a bed of coals in a brick fire pit. Other braziers burned. Lamp-lit trestles were laid with bread and dishes of beans, rice and tripes. A barrel of D’Aubray wine had been tapped. Puddles of water shone on the ground.

  ‘It’s been raining.’

  ‘What troubles you, love?’

  ‘We’re not safe here any more.’

  ‘I know.’

  A burly figure shouldered his way through the crowd to the house. He looked up and saw her and stopped beneath the window. It was Papin. He was sweating and breathless. He was scared. He called up.

  ‘Is Grymonde in there?’

  Carla stepped back. She didn’t want him to see Amparo. Her legs felt weak again, but not with dizziness. She wanted Mattias. She wanted Grymonde. Alice leaned out.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Is Grymonde there?’

  ‘He’s busy. Eat some pork.’

  ‘Can I come in, Mam?’

  ‘Don’t you dare. You know the rules.’

  ‘There’s trouble, Mam.’

  ‘Take it elsewhere.’

  ‘I can’t. It’s coming here.’

  ‘Wait down there.’

  Alice stepped back from the window. Her face was waxen.

  ‘The bad men come,’ said Estelle.

  It was the phrase Altan Savas had used.

  Carla and Alice turned to look at her.

  Estelle was as fierce as she had been that morning in Carla’s room.

  ‘Christian talked about Guards and the Soldiers of Christ. They want Grymonde. They want you, Carla. They still want you.’

  ‘Estelle,’ said Alice, ‘go downstairs and bolt the front door. There’s a high bolt and a low bolt – the low one will do. And a plank that bars the middle.’

  Estelle ran from the room, tossing her damp
red hair behind her.

  ‘And close the windows and the shutters.’

  Alice leaned on the bed and stooped and picked up the pewter chamber pot. She went to the window and emptied it and banged it on the sill like a gong.

  ‘Cockaigne! Cockaigne! Hear your mother!’

  Her voice was made weak by time and fate, yet all her inner power flew on its wings. Carla’s blood ran cold. The voice resounded from the walls of the yard and fell upon the revelry like the curse of some Devil-haunted dam. Alice let the pot fall from the window and leaned both hands on the woodwork. Her head dropped between her arms and she wheezed in deep breaths. Carla put her hand on her back. She felt the bubbling in Alice’s chest. Amparo blinked and stared up at Carla. Alice rallied and rose up again, and by now the yard was silent but for the crackling of the fires.

  ‘Can you hear them? Them as hate us? Them as always hated us?’

  Carla listened. She heard the distant sound of feet marching in double time.

  ‘To the tiles my children. Judgement is here. To the tiles. Make them rue the day they dared to set foot in Cockaigne.’

  Alice sagged, spent.

  The crowd started to move.

  Voices rose: in dismay; in doubt; in rage.

  Youths broke away and ran for the doorways.

  Carla took Amparo in her left arm. She ducked her right shoulder under Alice’s armpit and wrapped her free arm around her. She carried her to the chair and sat her down. She poured a cup of wine and put it in Alice’s hand. She went back to the window.

  The feasters, leaderless, had broken up into knots of uncertainty. Darkness was almost complete, its shadows made blacker by the glow and flicker of the fires. Carla couldn’t see Papin, or Antoinette. She saw Hugon shout at some lads and they followed him as he ran into a doorway. She couldn’t see Grymonde.

  The whole yard lit up to a volley of musketry.

  Plumes of powder smoke rolled into the crowd and bodies hurtled into their fellows and splashed into the puddles, men and women both. Panic swept the courtyard. A rush for every doorway and alley. The musketeers ran to deploy in two lines across the southern and western sides of the yard, eight of them in all, and began recharging their pieces. Each musket was defended by a militiaman with a pike. From behind this first wave came a fanatic horde howling the name of Saint-Jacques. They wore white and red armbands, steel helms. With sword, axe, halberd, spear, they fell upon the yard folk crowding the doorways without discrimination, hacking and stabbing at adults and children alike.