Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris

by Tim Willocks

  ‘My God, I am most heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I –’

  Tannhauser piked him. He stacked the pike and collected the lantern and the crossbow and returned to the Parvis. He left the lantern inside the portal and entered Notre-Dame.

  Tannhauser scanned the cathedral for armed men and saw no men at all. Both aisles this side of the transept were more than half full of women and children, most gathered in clusters, some in pairs or stranded in lone anguish. Others, especially the children, slept on the benches or the tiles. There was a good deal of crying, crying that had been stripped down to its bones. While each voice was its own, the whole was strangely harmonious, like some choir of woe singing from an infinite choice of hymns.

  He found Estelle by the font. Amparo was sucking a nipple on her flat, narrow chest. The sight took him aback. But both seemed content with the arrangement and neither seemed to find it unnatural, so he let it be.

  He retreated to a dark alcove and disarmed the crossbow and stowed it with his two spare bolts and the sergent’s quiver. He stowed Altan’s bow and quiver in a darker spot. He disarmed the pistol and hid it with them. He unfastened the sleeves of the shirt tied about his hips. The sleeves were beslimed with gore and he stripped the clots from shoulder to wrist and wrung them out. He’d take Estelle and Amparo with him. Not the most apt of escorts when asking how to find a pimp’s den, especially Tybaut’s, but Father Pierre was used to squalid company.

  The rest of the shirt was damp but not too bloody. He gave it a good flap. The white cross on the front was dark red, but Father Nose could make of that what he would. He pulled the shirt on. It was corrugated with gore and mocked his attempts to smooth it. He was as presentable as he was going to get. No, not quite.

  He went to the baptismal font and crossed himself, then scrubbed his face in the Holy Water. From the change in its colour, he considered it well done.

  Blood and Holy Water.

  Carla would want Amparo baptised. The Church was uncompromising on baptism; one could say harsh. The babe’s soul could be whipped off to Limbo at any moment, doomed through all eternity never to see God, and all for want of a handful of water and words. What a very particular God He was. But who was he to argue?

  ‘Estelle, let me have Amparo.’

  ‘You want to hold her?’

  ‘I’m going to baptise her.’

  He took the kidskin cradle from Estelle’s shirt. Amparo seemed to weigh close to nothing. Yet no weight so absolute had ever fallen on his heart. He raised her high in both hands and looked up at her face.

  Hundreds of candles burned in the church behind her and filled its enormous vault with ochre smoke. What a beauty she was. Only pure love could weigh so much, and yet fill him with ecstasy. He had been right. Amparo did gentle the storm. He could have stood there for an hour. Amparo was not so patient. She started howling.

  Tannhauser laughed. He lowered her and kissed her on the nose, or as nearly as he could without piercing her new skin with his bristles.

  ‘Ah, little Amparo doesn’t want to get wet. She wants her breast.’

  Amparo was not consoled. He tilted her over the mouth of the font. He scooped a handful of murky water and poured it over her head.

  ‘Ego te baptizo Amparo, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’

  Tannhauser took the crying infant to his chest with one hand. He smiled.

  ‘We have saved her from Hell. Now we must save her from Paris.’

  ‘Tannzer? Will you baptise me?’

  His smile widened. He looked down and Estelle beamed.

  ‘With pleasure. Lean over the font.’

  He palmed water over Estelle’s tangled locks. They were clean. He was surprised.

  ‘Ego te baptizo Estelle, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’

  ‘Am I saved from Hell?’

  ‘The Devil will be disappointed, but yes, you are saved.’

  The babe howled herself red, but he was loath to give her up so soon. He murmured to her, as he might to a fractious horse. Estelle grabbed his free forearm with both hands as if to stake her claim to his attention.

  ‘Hold tight,’ he said.

  He lifted her feet from the floor and swung her ahead of him and started to walk. Estelle shrieked with pleasure and landed and clung on tighter.

  ‘Again!’

  With one child thus entertained, he continued to mutter to Amparo in Turkish as he strode up the nave. The tiny screaming face was entirely captivating, but part of his mind turned to the practicalities. If Tybaut’s hovel wasn’t on the island, it was more likely on the Left Bank than the Right. It was unlikely he could reach either without bloodshed. Unless he took the priest with him. They’d lower the chains for a priest. A priest who consorted with pimps he could bend to his will.

  ‘Mattias?’

  Tannhauser stopped and lowered Estelle. He didn’t dare turn.

  His mind doubted the sound, that voice, for he wanted to hear it so badly he feared he must have imagined it. But his eyes filled with unmanly tears, and those he believed.

  ‘Carla! What are you doing here?’ Estelle let go of his arm. ‘We’ve been looking for you all over, and now we’ve found you.’

  Still, Tannhauser didn’t move. He had mourned her. She had given birth to his child. Dungeon, fire and sword had stood between them, yet here they were, both of them, in the crucible of Hermes Trismegistus. All that stood between them now was his guilt.

  ‘Tannzer, look!’

  Tannhauser’s heartbeat felt as fast as the babe’s. He suddenly felt conscious of his dire appearance. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before. At least he had washed his face; if he’d known she was going to be here, he’d have rinsed his mouth out, too. He turned.

  Her gaze struck him to his inmost core.

  Carla.

  He held her stare for a long time.

  She had always known him better than he knew her. He claimed few mysteries; hers were numberless. Her green eyes glittered, fire and tears. They were like wounds. He had been one of those who had inflicted them. The deepest of them. He loved her. With intense pain he loved her, and he knew he was unworthy of the honour. But she didn’t need his shame. What did she need? What could he give her?

  A smile couldn’t hurt, could it?

  A spirit too wild to be known or named flashed between them, the quintessence that bound their improbable and reckless union, and the hurt in her eyes retreated so completely he wondered if he had seen it at all.

  It was all right then.

  She still loved him.

  His pain abated, but his love had never felt so tender or so fierce.

  He took in her face, her body.

  His heart squeezed and he took a deep breath.

  She stood in the nave, trying not to sway in her bloodstained frock. She wasn’t exhausted. He’d seen her endure exhaustion for months at a time. She was frail, a state he had thought her incapable of attaining. The blood was hers, shed for their child. Her hair hung over her breast in a braid. He had never found her so beautiful.

  He stepped towards her and opened wide his arm and embraced her and pulled her to his chest. She looked at him, with her jaws clenched, in the way she sometimes did. He felt her nails dig into his chest until it hurt, her private way of telling him he was hers. Not so frail, then. He offered her the babe. Amparo’s wailing subsided to a tremble of the lip.

  Tannhauser smiled.

  ‘Carla, love, our nightingale is hungry, and not yet the worse for my thorns.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Just Another Child

  CARLA REALISED IT was the first time she had ever heard Amparo cry.

  Yet despite the lamentations that echoed about the cathedral, some of them the cries of infants, she knew the instant she heard it that the voice belonged to her daughter. The sound penetrated her despair and shocked her out if it. No sooner had her most passionate wish been granted than she was afraid that she
was wrong. Reason said she had to be wrong. It was mere desperation that recognised the voice, not her ears.

  The cries came from the back of the church.

  Amparo couldn’t be here. No one knew that Carla was here, except Bonnett, and why else would anyone bring Amparo, and who would dare this bloody night with a baby, and how? She tried to stand up too quickly and her vision went black and she sat down again. She couldn’t let herself faint. By the time she came round, Amparo might be gone. She put her head between her knees and breathed steadily. Her head cleared. She could still hear the unique cry, now louder than ever, and clearly outraged, but no closer.

  Carla sat up slowly. She reached out and found Antoinette’s hand.

  ‘Antoinette, come and sit on my left side.’

  Antoinette slipped past Carla’s knees and sat beside her. Carla slid along the bench and lifted her legs over her violl to sit on the outer edge. Her pelvis had stiffened. The pain was considerable. She felt another trickle between her thighs. She turned to look down the nave. She forgot the pain.

  A barbaric figure loomed from the rearmost shadows of Notre-Dame.

  Her heart soared so fast, it almost broke.

  She wanted to blink but didn’t dare.

  Mattias strode up the nave towards her with Amparo yelling from the bight of his arm. He was murmuring and pursing his lips at her with great absorption. His neck was black with blood, as was the cross of Saint John on his chest, and the gore pooled in the creases of his boots was still wet. He looked as untamed as ever. She had never seen him filled with such joy. He had found her. He had found them both. She noticed the white ribbon tied around his brow. The pale horseman to the judgement had come, carrying her baby. And he had brought the Morning Star with him.

  Estelle clung onto his arm with both hands, repeatedly lifting both feet off the floor, whereupon he swung her in the air, and her red locks flew out behind her, and she laughed. Carla smiled. As a spectacle it made the royal wedding, which had taken the same route the week before, seem utterly drab. They drew closer. She was almost reluctant to spoil so lovely a picture. She felt a flutter in her throat and wanted to cry with happiness. She didn’t. She didn’t want his first sight of her to be a woman in tears.

  Carla put her hands on the bench and pushed herself up. She didn’t fall. Without thinking she smoothed her frock and realised she was almost as bloody as Mattias. She smoothed her hair and arranged her braid.

  Mattias, entranced as he was by his daughter, walked right past her.

  Estelle, giggling in flight, didn’t see her either.

  Carla almost laughed, but she needed all her might to step into the nave.

  Mattias’s back blocked out the high altar.

  He was haloed with golden candlelight.

  ‘Mattias?’

  Mattias stopped. Estelle let go of his arm and turned towards her with delight, and said something she didn’t quite hear. They had searched for her. They had found her.

  Mattias’s head bent forward and his shoulders heaved. He raised his head.

  He turned and looked at her.

  Of the things she needed most from him, she could only have named Amparo, and his love, which, long as he had been gone, she had never doubted. Had she doubted it, she could not have endured. Yet he gave her something more: his tears. Though he did not let them fall, they made his eyes shine, and she drank in the sight of their gleaming for a long time. There was no hurry. Mattias was always ready to die, as any blaze of fire must be. So was Amparo, cradled as she was against his blood-soaked chest. Her daughter. Their daughter. Yet in this moment his. Mattias and his daughter.

  Nothing had ever stirred her more deeply.

  Carla was ready to die, too.

  If they were together, she was ready for anything.

  Her flame leapt towards his and in an instant they were one.

  Mattias looked at her whole and the sight knifed him. Her appearance must have been more sorry that she imagined; yet what was a frock? The last thing she wanted was for him to think feeble. She willed him to hold her so she could show him it was not so, and he stepped forward on the very instant and grappled her to his body and took her breath away. Desire surged up through her exhaustion and she dug her nails into his chest until her fingers hurt. He was here and he was hers.

  He gave her something else that she needed and hadn’t known it. He grinned the broken-toothed grin that had enchanted her when first they had met.

  ‘Carla, love, our nightingale is hungry, and not yet the worse for my thorns.’

  Amparo was cocooned in animal skin. Her lip trembled. Whatever her adventures had been, she radiated good health. There was no hurry, at least not to feed her.

  ‘Kiss me.’

  Mattias made a sound in his throat. He kissed her on the lips.

  She felt him flow into her. She poured herself into him.

  She opened her eyes, her lips still on his, and he sensed it. She looked into icy pools. How strange was his love. It cascaded from places where love did not belong. He was altogether mysterious. Well as she knew him, and his instincts and reactions, at this range she always felt that she did not know who lurked inside him at all.

  He withdrew and his expression changed.

  ‘My intention was to leave Paris, tonight, but it will be perilous. This is the safest place in the city, especially for you. I’ve a bag of gold that would keep you as the cardinal’s private guest for months. The intelligent move is to stay here. I think you should.’

  Her stomach turned over. ‘Are you telling me you can’t stay?’

  ‘The longer I stay in Paris, the closer I am to a noose.’

  ‘Would Garnier violate Notre-Dame?’

  ‘When he calls me out, and he will, I can’t hide behind the priest’s skirts.’

  ‘I’d never ask you to.’

  ‘If I did hide here, they would simply wait for me. This is their city, not mine. If I’m still here when this feast of blood is over, the crimes of which they will accuse me, and of which I am guilty, will be harder for those who matter to ignore. I’d be the fiend who lurked in their cathedral. But if I’m long gone, then it’s a few dozen corpses among thousands, and their suit becomes a tale they’d be wise not to tell, for they’re guilty, too.’

  ‘How could you imagine I would let you go without us?’

  He studied her. He had the respect, and wisdom, not to argue the case.

  ‘The Porte Saint-Denis opens at midnight. We have time but I’ve a wagon to collect. Wait for me by the font. By the way, I baptised Amparo. It’s valid – doctrine of dire necessity, Council of Trent, so forth. I didn’t know you were here or I’d have waited.’

  ‘You did right. What else troubles you?’

  ‘Naught that need trouble you.’

  He took her around the waist and led them to the rear of the cathedral. He spotted a stray chair and scooped it up as he passed. Carla leaned into him and lost herself in Amparo’s face. When they reached the shadows, he had Carla sit down. She unbuttoned the top of her frock and put Amparo’s mouth to her nipple. She began suckling at once. The sensation induced an ecstatic drowsiness. Carla threw her head back and shook it to rouse herself. The ochre glow beneath the vault augured some enormous conflagration.

  ‘Charge towards the fire.’

  ‘Carla, are you well?’ asked Mattias.

  ‘Yes. I’m well. Go.’

  Carla saw Estelle watching her.

  ‘I didn’t take Amparo to the convent.’

  ‘Thank you, Estelle, with all my heart.’

  Estelle grinned. ‘Now all we have to do is find Pascale.’

  Mattias turned. Carla saw that this was what so troubled him.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘But when?’ said Estelle.

  ‘Who is Pascale?’ said Carla.

  ‘She’s one of us. She’s a sister.’

  ‘We don’t have time,’ said Mattias.

  ‘You had time unt
il you found me,’ said Carla.

  ‘My word is final.’

  She saw the pain it caused him. She did not need to know more.

  ‘Mattias, go and find Pascale. We’ll wait here.’

  Mattias walked away, towards the portal, not the altar.

  ‘Mattias.’

  He stopped. ‘She’s just another a child. Of those the world has plenty.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘She has as good a chance without us as with us, maybe a better one.’

  He continued and stopped again as an ungainly boy ran into the cathedral.

  He spoke to Mattias in great earnest but Carla couldn’t make out the words. He had a harelip. At his ankles trotted a small, grotesque dog. The boy mimed putting something over his own head, like a collar or a necklace.

  Mattias turned and rushed past her, she couldn’t see where.

  He returned in yet greater haste and ran through the portal with the boy.

  Carla gave in to the drowsiness without sleeping. As her milk filled her babe, her babe filled her. There was no hurry.

  She opened her eyes and saw Grymonde.

  He shambled towards her, his either arm held by Mattias and the boy. His face was painted white and the skins of broken blisters hung down his cheeks. His head roved back and forth in sudden jerks as if in search of his lost sight. His tawny brown eyes.

  She felt Alice draw back with a deep breath of pain.

  Whether behind her or inside her, Alice was here.

  Carla turned back to Amparo and began to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Crucible

  TANNHAUSER WOULD HAVE left Pascale behind but for Grégoire’s news. He would have left Juste and the Mice, too. He would have swallowed the guilt, though he would never have digested it. He glanced across Grymonde’s bulk at Grégoire and nodded, in the hope that some particle of his gratitude would be conveyed. Grégoire grinned. They stopped by the door in the alcove and Tannhauser set down the lantern and found the tool pouch in Grymonde’s satchel. He opened the neck and pulled out a handful of flat iron rods with tips of diverse shapes at their either ends.