Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (29 page)

‘I won’t tell you again. Put the pimp’s clothes on.’

‘That fire in the sixteenth must be close to the printer’s shop,’ said Grégoire.

His attention was still focused near the south-western curve of the city wall.

Tannhauser looked. With a sudden billow the rising smoke became thicker.

Tannhauser pressed a coin into Grégoire’s hand.

‘Bring Clementine to the Parvis. Fast as you can.’

THEY SAT ACROSS
a table in the kitchen and drank rosehip tea.

The kitchen was at the front of the house. The sun had risen high enough to shine into the yard and through the windows. In the rising heat, the tea was refreshing.

Carla could not take her eyes off the woman in front of her.

Alice was shapeless, heavy boned, once plump, now shrunken by hardship and years. The skin of her arms and jowls hung in wrinkled flaps. Her face was broad, her cheeks patched with purple. Her mouth was full, her lips the colour of liver and puckered over her gums where the teeth were missing. Her hair was a dark ruddy brown, wisped with white, and cut crudely just above her shoulders. Her eyes were winter-grey, yet in them Carla saw Grymonde. There was a deep tiredness in her, yet also the embers of a natural force that once must have been tremendous. In spite of all, she radiated largeness. Carla couldn’t tell how old she was; sixty at least, perhaps seventy, or even more. Old as she was, diminished as she was, Alice seemed to transcend the notion of age.

‘Time’s a fairy tale, love,’ said Alice, as if reading her thoughts. ‘A gaol without walls. They were clever, weren’t they, them as got us all to believe in it. Calendars, dates – the year of Our Lord, no less, that’ll keep us quiet, won’t it? But like most such craft and fancy, it’s naught but another lash for our backs. Now they have clocks, so they can have us in shackles and chains as well.’

Carla was uncertain of how to contend with her. She was in a den of thieves, with the mother of a man prone to murder all and sundry without compunction. Alice laughed, a dry laugh that, had it been less warm, might well have mocked her.

‘Don’t be timid here, love, that would never do. Speak up. You’ll be speaking up before this day’s out, and this woman will be mopping up your slops, so let’s not stand on ceremony.’

‘I do appreciate you taking me in, madame, more than words can say.’

Alice flapped a hand in dismissal. Her palm was shiny and red.

Carla realised Alice was not merely tired, but far from well, and her heart went out to her. In all her life Carla had never known a woman for whom she felt awe, and few for whom she’d felt any great respect. Her own mother had been weak, docile, afraid of her husband, afraid of the Church, afraid of the opinions of her peers. In every sense she had lived on her knees, and had died in a welter of regrets. Her mother had betrayed Carla in just such a circumstance as this, when she had conspired in the abduction of Orlandu on the morning he was born. Her mother had stolen Carla’s motherhood, and Carla had never found the goodness to forgive her.

Carla reached down for her valise but her bulge got in the way. She pushed her chair back and stood up and squatted. Inside the valise she found a bottle of perfume and wrapped it in a silk scarf the colour of the sky. She had bought the scarf because its blue was the same shade as Mattias’s eyes. As she stood up a pang took her. She put the bundle on the table and leaned her hands on her knees. She breathed as deeply as she could and mustered her pride to stop her crying out. She felt Alice’s eyes taking her measure. The old woman said nothing and Carla was not sorry. Her previous midwife had belaboured her with such a torrent of needless instructions she had had to tell her to be quiet. The pang passed.

She straightened and managed a smile, which Alice returned.

‘That’s another you won’t have to go through again.’

‘I wonder how many more.’

‘Best not to, love. There’ll be more than you dare imagine. Forget each one until the next comes along, and you’ll sail through this like Cleopatra’s barge on a river of ass’s milk.’

‘I sometimes fear I’ll lack the strength.’

‘There’s naught stronger in Creation than a woman in labour. If Our Mother hadn’t made us that way, none of us would be here. If a grand to-do is called for, we’ll have one, don’t you worry. In the meanwhile, why not enjoy? At least as best we can?’

Alice’s faith in their respective powers anointed Carla like a balm. She felt a great weight lift from her spirit. The very strength of her reaction prompted her to doubt if it was wise. She had no good reason at all to place her trust – her life, her child – in the hands of this strange old woman. No reason except her instinct; and the old woman’s strength. The latter could not be in doubt, for Alice was here, alive, in Cockaigne. She’d endured. Carla reminded herself that she, too, had endured. She cast out the doubt. Doubt was fear in its most treacherous form and her worst enemy. She smiled.

‘What a marvellous plan. Yes. Why not enjoy?’

She retrieved the bundle and offered it.

‘What’s this?’

‘For you, madame. A token.’

Alice wiped her hands on her skirt and took the bundle and unwrapped it. She caressed the scarf against her cheek, and its quality was not lost on her. She studied the bottle and removed the glass stopper and wafted it beneath her chin.

‘Oh my.’ She dabbed the stopper under each ear. ‘This is much too fine for this old girl. They’ll mistake me for the Queen of Sheba.’

‘Nonsense. This is the sweetest smelling house in Paris. It’s the first time I’ve felt able to breathe. Please accept it.’

‘Nonsense, is it? Very well. Thank you. But you must keep the scarf.’

‘The scarf is yours, too.’

‘No, no, enough is more than enough. It will serve to wipe your paps when you’re feeding the babe. Isn’t that why you brought it with you?’

Carla nodded. She took the scarf and draped it round her neck.

‘You might have picked a darker colour for the job – one could say the same for that fine frock – but no one here will care. Sit back down and tell me what you wanted to say.’

‘You said time was a fairy tale, but is time not a condition of our mortal existence?’

‘No, it is not. Our Mother Nature takes no heed of time, though the spheres themselves fall like apples, as, mark my words, one day they will.’

Carla took a sip of rosehip tea. She thought of Mattias and his mystical notions.

‘I’m not unsympathetic to such ideas. Yet the seasons turn.’

‘Aye, they turn. As do the stars, like a wheel without cease. They know nor month nor year, nor beginning nor end, because there is no end. There’s only what comes next. How much time is in a dream? Or a memory? Or an embrace? And if we can’t answer that, how shall we say how much time there is in a life? Let alone in Life Her-own-self?’

‘The Bible attests that God made the universe in six days.’

‘And who writ the Bible? Fools. For what need would God have of days?’

Alice scoffed. Carla suppressed a smile.

‘You make a strong point.’

‘Then allow this old heathen to make a stronger one: God did not make us, either. Our Mother the Earth made us, just as she makes the leaves on the trees and the birds of the air. As she makes all living things, and always did. A rib, they tell us? Hellfire. Did God make a sow from the rib of a boar? And dare we even ask which part of the cock He used to make a hen?’ She made an obscene gesture with her fist. ‘No wonder He needed six days.’

Carla was laughing and Alice joined in, rapping the tabletop with swollen knuckles.

‘That book’s stuffed my son’s head with all manner of bloodshed and crime, and in those trades his head needed no help at all. Not that he’s a scholar, mind, he just has a taste for tall tales and peculiar ideas. If we must speak of time, the Bible was written yesterday, and on some tomorrow not so very distant, all the bibles ever struck will be swallowed by the dirt from which they came, aye, and their churches and their palaces too, be they ever so mighty. Now, let the buggers come and burn me.’

Again they laughed.

‘Since I surely cannot refute you, they’ll have to burn us both.’

Carla clapped both hands to a twinge in her belly, but it wasn’t a true pang.

‘Your pardon,’ said Alice. ‘This old woman is short of decent company. But anything she says is yours to take or leave, as you will.’

‘I’ll happily take it. I’m short of good company, too.’

‘Perhaps not so.’ Alice leaned her head back and squinted. ‘Who’s your angel?’

Carla answered without thought, even though she wasn’t sure what was meant.

‘Amparo is my angel.’

‘Her essence glows, just behind you. Pale as dawn. And as fearless.’

‘That’s Amparo, yes.’

Carla felt tears rise. She blinked them back. She turned. She saw nothing. Part of her mind wanted to disbelieve Alice, but in her heart she did believe her, completely. She turned back and Alice saw that she believed.

‘You’re lucky to have such a guardian, especially for this work.’

‘She was my dearest friend. She –’

‘Amparo knows all that and so do you. This old girl doesn’t need to. It’s just good that we’re mindful she’s here.’

‘Thank you for making me so. And it is good, so very good.’

Alice shifted in her chair to ease some stiffness. She clasped her hands.

‘Let’s hold our peace a while, so Amparo knows we cherish her presence.’

Carla closed her eyes and let Amparo’s spirit fill her. She remembered the golden days they had spent together. A more unlikely pair could hardly be imagined, yet what music they two had made. Strange roads, as Mattias had once put it, strange roads had brought her and Amparo together; her and Mattias, too; just as strange roads had brought her to this table. In the usual course she would have questioned what was happening here; and the questions in their asking would have locked out all the answers worth having. She felt at home. She didn’t know why. She had never known that feeling for a place before; not for the dark mausoleum in which her parents had raised her; not in the house she had lived in for almost twenty years. She had known it only in moments: when transported into music’s realm; on horseback; amid the suffering and chaos of the Hospital in Malta. In Mattias’s arms. Yet she felt at home in this squalid hovel.

Sorrow pierced her. Salt tears slid down her face.

‘I’m sorry, madame.’

‘Let the tears fall, love.’

‘I am all in confusion.’

Alice reached a hand across the table. Carla took it. The hand was cool, yet the warmth of an immense love flowed into her, and with that flowing, the love became yet larger.

‘Mattias is missing, Orlandu is missing. The children I kissed goodnight were butchered while I listened to their screams – and while I did nothing to help them. Everywhere is frenzy, cruelty, hatred, greed –’

‘Not here, love, not here.’

Carla couldn’t help glancing towards the door and the revels beyond.

‘Leave them to their sport,’ said Alice.

‘They sport with trophies cut from a man’s skin.’

‘And one day my son’s head will decorate a spike on the city walls.’

‘No number of wrongs can make a right.’

‘This woman didn’t say they do. She was simply pointing out, in agreement with you, that barbarity and corruption are but the faces on the coin of man’s kingdom.’

‘But why so? There’s more than enough for all.’

‘Set no store in politic, love. Don’t seek answers where you’ll never find them.’

‘Are we helpless then?’

‘Not at all and to the very contrary. We can’t stop their wrongs, much less should we avenge them. They’re busy enough with all that as it is. There’ll never be any shortage of heads and spikes. But they’re the helpless ones. They’re the ones who’ve mortgaged their souls to idols of their own invention. But we needn’t catch their madness. We can invite their horrors in here, or we can not. We can live as our Mother intended, right here where we are, wherever we are, because we are here, and here is us: you and your child, and Amparo, and what’s left of this old devil’s dam.’

‘My shoes are filled with the blood they spilled. It’s not easy to ignore them.’

‘This lowborn lass didn’t tell you to ignore them either, still less that anything was easy. But we can pay attention to the things that will make us more, rather than less.’

‘It was your son who –’ Carla bit her tongue.

‘My son has broken this old heart times without number. That’s what sons do, and we mothers can only count the ways. They are men. They are monsters, even those who are reckoned – and especially those who reckon themselves – the glory of their race. But we can’t hold that against them, no more than we can blame the rain for being wet. They fear life, even when they don’t fear death, because they know in their bones they can never bring Life Her-own-self to heel, much as they’re bent on trying to. So they make up their wondrous tales – for that talent, at least, let’s give them credit – and they say, “This is the world as it should be”, and they set out to dominate the worlds-that-should-be, instead of living in the world-without-flaw that already is. And thus they are always at war, with each other, and with themselves, and with Life Her-own-self. They call their doomed fancy “civilisation”. Paris is its centre, so they tell us, and that makes the point far better than this old witch can.’

‘I have a son.’

Alice said nothing to this. Carla looked at the table, into nowhere. Orlandu, in the moment of his purest innocence, and without any choice in the matter, had broken her heart before he had known that she possessed one. And he’d broken it again when he’d left her to go to Paris; and when he’d talked Mattias into teaching him how to fight with a knife, and when . . .

‘And I am carrying a son.’

‘The chances are always fair. We’ll see. How much does it matter to you?’

‘It matters not at all, of course not. Boy or girl, it’s my child.’

‘It matters a good deal to some. Women are drawn into the fairy tales, too.’