Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (60 page)

‘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.

Carla saw figures appear on the rooftops on the south side of the yard. They stood and watched, unnerved by the gunfire and the savagery.

Amparo started crying and Carla held her closer.

She saw Grymonde loom from a black slit, his enormous head and shoulders unmistakable. He cut the throats of a musket man and his flanker from behind before they knew they were dying. He ran to the fire pit and raised his arms, bloody knives in either hand.

‘Fight for your very souls! For Cockaigne!’

A pikeman lunged at him and Grymonde stepped aside and stabbed him with both blades and hoisted him and rammed him face-down into the coals amid a fountain of sparks. The spit and its roast tumbled over. Flame whooshed from the pit as the pikeman’s hair caught and Grymonde let him go. Tiles and slung stones began to hurtle from the roofs along with jeers and oaths of hatred. The pikeman staggered away, lumps of glowing charcoal embedded in his face, his head ablaze. Grymonde took the fallen pike and spun and launched it overarm at a clutch of militia. They scattered and one was impaled through and through, and as the weight threw him down the pike impaled a second through the legs. The lamed one dragged himself clear and crawled, and a woman darted from the shadows and stabbed him in the neck.

Grymonde looked up at Carla. He tossed his chin at the front door.

Carla walked to Alice and kissed Amparo, who still cried, and though it tore at her innards she put the babe in Alice’s arms and hurried from the birthing room.

Her belly cramped and she ignored it. The stairway was dark; a yellow glow from below. Her hips were stiff and she had to lean on the wall. Towards the bottom she lost her footing and slid down the last few steps on her arse. She thrust herself to her feet and staggered across the kitchen.

She saw Estelle who stood looking at the cards still spread on the table.

‘Grymonde is here. Help me open the door.’

Gunshots boomed outside, individual fire. Estelle sprinted ahead of her and drew the lower bolt. Together they lifted the heavy bracing timber. Carla wondered how the child had managed it alone. She pulled open the door and Grymonde barged in as a musket ball threw splinters into his neck. As he shut the door, Papin threw his shoulder against it and stumbled inside. Grymonde restored the bar to its hasps and threw the bolts.

‘I didn’t find Mattias,’ said Grymonde. ‘Only the bodies he left behind him. Then I got wind of this.’ He turned and saw Estelle. ‘La Rossa? My, what a beauty you’re becoming.’

‘I’m not a Judas,’ said Estelle.

‘How could you be a Judas? You’re the dragon’s wings.’

He grinned and stroked her hair.

‘Can I have my knife back then?’

Grymonde returned her small knife and she put it in her belt.

‘Now, to the roof, all of you. Papin, the sledgehammer there, fetch it.’

Grymonde grabbed a satchel from a peg and shook a purse to show them it clinked and stuffed it inside.

‘Papin, stop trembling, these girls shame you. Take the sledge to the roof.’

‘How did you get away, Papin?’ Estelle stared at him.

‘From one
sergent
? Easy. How did you?’

‘No more talk,’ said Grymonde. ‘Action. Action.’

Papin took the sledgehammer and lumbered to the stairs.

‘Estelle,’ said Carla, ‘will you go and tell Alice to wrap Amparo snugly?’

Estelle ran after Papin. Grymonde put a powder horn and a pouch of balls in the satchel. He took Carla’s arm and walked her to the stair. He stopped at the table to look at the cards.

‘The Pilgrims of Saint-Jacques are here to rescue you. There’s no other reason those fanatics would come. If it were they alone I might let you go, for I believe their motives are gallant, for once. But Petit Christian is out there, too.’

‘It was he who hired you.’

‘Aye. I still don’t know why. He also hired five bravos to capture or kill Mattias. If his master wanted you dead this morning, he’s even keener now, though of all that business I’m sure the Pilgrims are ignorant. So, please, to the roof.’