Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (30 page)

Alice squeezed Carla’s hand and withdrew it and Carla felt an enormous sense of loss. Alice put her palms on the table and leaned forward to hoist herself up to her feet.

‘The water in the kettle’s still hot. We’ll wash that blood off in a twinkling.’

‘No, don’t go, madame, please, stay. I’ve waded in blood before, I don’t care about that. You’re right, I know you’re right. Truly I do. Please, let me have your hand again.’

Carla held Alice’s hand and looked into the long, hard winter of her eyes.

‘You have so little, yet you give so much.’

‘We’ll have no talk of that kind, thank you very much. We’re not running a stall on the market, though we could. The house is stuffed with rubbish.’

‘I didn’t mean to offend you. I only intended –’

‘We know what you intended, love, and none is taken.’ Alice rolled the ache from one shoulder. ‘As regards what you at least seem to mean by “having”, you “have” rather less than a little yourself. For a certainty the things you’ve left behind aren’t here, and may never be “there” again, so why lean on them?’

‘I do not lean on them. If I did, I don’t think I would be alive to be here.’

‘Well said, girl. Whatever a person can’t carry in their own arms isn’t worth having. That’s my book.’

Carla smiled and felt the tightness of the dried tear stains on her cheeks. In her mind’s eye she saw Orlandu as ragged as he’d first appeared to her. She saw Mattias watching his life’s work burn from the deck of a midnight galley. She saw herself, not in one place or moment but in many – perhaps those were the only moments when she was herself – with nothing of value but whatever lay within her. That was never more true than here and now.

‘So, you’re not hearing anything you don’t already know.’ Alice smiled, too. ‘Mayhap you’re a bit of a witch yourself.’

‘Mayhap.’

‘Grand. Grand. Now we can talk plain.’

Carla revisited her visions and found an error.

‘I couldn’t carry a horse, and I would have had little indeed without their companionship. But then, one never possesses a horse. At best, one is with it.’

‘A delight these old bones have never known, so it’s a joy to see it in you. And there we are: as far as “giving” goes, and by no means as regards only horses, we meet upon the level. And there I trust we’ll stay, in confusion or otherwise.’

‘You flatter me.’ Carla saw Alice raise one brow in warning. ‘Yes. I accept. On the level, there we meet and there we’ll stay.’ The brow fell. ‘May I ask an odd question?’

‘They tend to be the best kind.’

‘You call me “love”.’

‘It fits well enough. But if it bothers you, I’ll call you anything you want.’

‘No, no, it’s wonderful.’

Again Carla found herself smiling. Alice’s smile was altogether more wry.

‘Then your odd question has its answer.’

‘And another? I may be mistaken, but I don’t believe I’ve heard you say “I”.’

‘You’re not mistaken. On the whole, this woman would rather not be fooled into thinking she’s at the centre of much that matters, a fancy which saying “I” fosters, and which same fancy she sees everywhere about her, and which is prime among the many tales that fill our shoes with blood. It gives her a clearer view of the way things are, which is that she is but a thread, and not the tapestry.’

Carla took this in. Her reason hopped from toe to toe in consternation. Her soul understood in an instant: at this of all moments, she wasn’t ‘I’, she was ‘we’.

‘She might also point out,’ added Alice, ‘that this is not a matter of false humility.’

‘We had already gathered that much. A golden thread, then.’

Alice took this edged compliment with an inclination of her head.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘I have my angels, too.’

Carla studied her hunched, lumpy figure, so graceless yet so full of grace.

‘I wish I could see them. They must be glorious.’

‘No more than yours nor anyone else’s. And when you open your eyes, you will.’

‘May I call you “Alice”?’

‘Hellfire, it would surely be an improvement on “madame”.’

Carla felt another contraction arise. She stood up and leaned forward on the table. This time she groaned without inhibition and felt the better for it. As the pang in her belly waned, the pain in her back became so intense she feared she had done some injury to her spine. She pushed the heels of her hands into the agony, but couldn’t push hard enough.

Alice lumbered to her feet. Her stoicism could not mask the effort it cost.

‘Don’t get up, Alice. It’s passing now.’

Carla craned her neck and straightened and masked her discomfort. Alice shuffled around the table. Carla saw that her ankles and feet were so swollen they overlapped the edges of her slippers. Alice rubbed her hands together and stood behind her.

‘No wonder. Drop your shoulders, and widen your feet and push your hips out, you’re not here for an audience with the Queen.’

Carla did as she was told and felt some improvement.

‘Now, let’s see if these angels won’t give us a bit of help.’

Carla didn’t feel Alice touch her, and was sure she hadn’t, yet a deep heat crept through her loins. Within moments the pain had subsided to a gentle ache.

‘How did you do that?’

‘We all have healing hands if we would use them.’

Alice limped to a dresser, favouring one hip, and into a wide, deep bowl stacked two smaller bowls, two spoons, all of wood, and a knife. She set them on the table.

‘Let me help you.’

‘Don’t fuss. It’s done.’

Alice returned to the dresser. From a cupboard she took an earthen jar and brought it to the table. A worn grass-green cushion lay on her chair. She adjusted the cushion and sat down with a groan of relief. The purple patches on her cheeks were darker. She breathed with strain, propped up by her reddened elbows, and it took her several breaths to recover. Carla was worried. She didn’t want the effort of attending her labour to overtax Alice. Couldn’t they recruit some extra help? Alice saw Carla’s expression.

‘You were told not to fuss.’

Alice cleared her throat into her fist and swallowed with a florid grimace.

‘Now, open that jar and let’s set to.’

The earthen jar was painted with pitch and sealed with plaited willow twigs coated in wax. Carla cut the lid off and a sweet aroma rose from the neck. She was starving. The jar was filled to the brim with liquid honey and halved pears. She loaded the small bowls.

‘This smells delicious, but of more than just honey and pears.’

‘There’s some quinces diced up in there if you dig deep. They’re choice. And don’t skimp on the honey, pour as if our souls depended on it. We want to finish this jar before my son gets back. It’s a miracle it’s survived this long.’

‘Where has Grymonde gone?’

‘This old woman has learned not to ask.’

‘But he’ll be back?’

Carla felt safe here; but Grymonde would make her feel safer.

‘That big bowl is for you, in case you puke.’

‘I’m still leaking.’

‘The floor’s seen worse. Just let us know if it shows green or bloody.’

‘May I stand to eat? It feels more comfortable.’

‘Please do, it will help the babe along.’

‘Really? That is, I would stand on my head if you so counselled, it’s just that previous midwives instructed me to lie in bed all day.’

Alice confined her opinion on said practice to a grunt and a curl of her lip.

‘Wait until the surgeons get their hands on us, as of course they’re scheming to do. The gravediggers and priests will make a fortune.’

Alice grabbed a bowl and they ate, Carla passing compliments while Alice supped and sighed and smacked her lips. Carla felt a surge of deep tenderness for the old woman, so deep she didn’t know what to do with it; so deep she again felt tears begin to trickle down her cheeks. Alice pushed her empty bowl across the table and Carla refilled it and poured more honey. A tear fell into the bowl and she apologised. She set the jar down and took a sip of rosehip tea.

‘Our Mother welcomes all her children’s tears, love. They remind her we’re worth all that we’ve cost her. And happy tears most of all. Here, let’s heat that tea up.’

‘No, it’s good cold, to wash down the honey.’

Carla drank again and composed herself. She wasn’t used to so many sentiments.

‘
Play for her
,’ whispered Amparo.

Her voice was so clear that Carla turned around. She saw no light or emanation, and was disappointed, but her eyes fell on her violl case stacked among the rummage.

‘What did she say?’ asked Alice.

‘She told me to play for you.’

‘The fiddle’s yours, not plunder? As if we needed any more.’

‘Grymonde took nothing from me. I don’t understand why. He’s so –’

Carla hesitated. She didn’t know how to continue.

‘My son is mad, bloody and beautiful. His affairs are his, and yours are yours, this woman doesn’t pry. But his dominion stops at that door, so if he troubles you, let us know.’

‘I’m not his prisoner, at least I don’t think so.

‘We’ll leave it at that. Are you fit to play?’

‘Until the next pang comes, yes.’

‘You can’t say no to an angel, love. And the rest of us would fain listen, too.’

As Carla took the violl case the next pang came and she was glad, for its passing would give her time to play. She leaned on the case and rode the spasm. Its strength was greater yet, and lights danced behind her clenched eyelids, but it took less from her than the one that had almost laid her low in the yard. She realised how frightened she had been, despite her bravado. She stretched. She undid the ties on the case and took the violl and bow and sat on the edge of her chair.

Her stomach bulged across her thighs and as much as she spread her legs the baby had shifted so far down, and her muscles were so tense, she could hardly bow at all. She lifted the instrument clear and closed her thighs, and rested the violl against the outside of her left thigh and twisted sideways towards it. The position was imperfect but easier.

‘Amparo came from Spain. She brought this
Follia
with her, from the dances known to the bull drovers she grew up with. It isn’t a piece in the usual sense. It has no fixed form or theme, though it belongs to the key of D minor. We never knew where it was going to take us. We never played it the same way twice.’

She felt suddenly bashful, which was unlike her. But though she had played for princes and rogues, she had never had an audience like this. She turned her head. Alice was watching her. She nodded. Carla took courage from the angel at her back.

‘Amparo said it should be played as if you’re trying to catch the wind.’

Carla’s gambo violl was as much a part of her as the fingers that played it. And yet, as she bowed an arpeggio from treble to bass to prove the tuning – as she’d done ten thousand times before and more – the vast and bottomless sound that rolled through the room stole her breath away.

She heard Amparo sigh.

She heard Alice murmur.

The violl spoke from where Carla stood, teetering on the rim between death and life. The instrument was as close to her heart as any other living thing; and that it was a thing alive she knew as surely as she knew her own name. During her solitude – and not then alone but always: in love and in confusion, in grief, in gladness, in desperation, in shame – the violl had affirmed, and acclaimed, all that was most true in her spirit. Before the chord could fade she plunged after it, running pell-mell along the rim, chasing the wind.

Notes in abandon flew with her and came from she knew not where. They blew through her being in shifting gusts, like wasteful seas, like falling blossom, like hail, like startled doves; like peals of thunder. She wept. She smiled. She dissolved. She knew not who she was. And in that not-knowing she knew a oneness with all that she had never imagined. Wood; skin; strings; sound; child; quinces; woman. Pang. She leaned forward into the pang, into the violl, sawing the bow, faster, stronger, no longer chasing the wind but riding it. She threw her head back and cried out in ecstasy. The
Follia
cried out with her, and the rim itself dissolved, and life and death merged to avow the oneness.

The
Follia
had no end; that was its nature.

And so, when Carla at last stopped playing, she didn’t know it.

‘Carla, are you all right, love?’

Carla felt a hand on her shoulder and opened her eyes. She found herself bent over her lap, one arm cradling her belly and the other her gambo violl. She roused herself and looked up at Alice. The old woman’s face was drawn.

‘Alice, I’m sorry, I’m fine. If I alarmed you, forgive me.’

‘Hush, now,’ Alice’s own voice was hushed. ‘Let’s not chase it away.’

She meant the
Follia
, and she was right. Its shade still lingered, like incense.

Alice took the violl. She tried to stoop to pick up the bow from the floor but had to pause halfway. She leaned on the violl for support. Carla retrieved the bow and they straightened up together. Their faces were inches apart. They had not been so close before. Carla’s condition had mewed her up within it, within herself and her need to birth her child. She knew it, because now she saw how frail Alice was. She had seen the signs but not felt the fact of it; and the old woman’s fundamental force was so great it masked her infirmity. Carla knew too, that if Alice hadn’t chosen to reveal it, she wouldn’t have seen it.

Carla put her arms around her. Her belly pressed against her.

Alice laid her cheek on Carla’s breast. Her voice almost cracked.

‘All my days I waited to hear the Song of the Earth.’

Carla stroked her hair. It was thin and dry. Carla didn’t speak. Alice raised her head and for the first time put a hand on Carla’s belly. Her touch was unexpectedly delicate yet Carla felt her body giving up its secrets. Alice nodded and her former indomitability was restored. She stepped back and handed over the violl.

‘He’s well on his way. Or she’s on hers.’

Alice lumbered back to the table, once again radiating largeness.