Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (63 page)

‘Forgive me – I’m addled by pain. She agreed to take Christian to Cockaigne.’

The street began to slope upwards. The gradient was mild but Joco seized the excuse to slow down. Tannhauser jabbed the spear into the dark stain on his shirt. The street narrowed. Three men stepped from a tavern, a few steps beyond Frogier. Their bulk blocked the way. They turned to study the strange procession and saw Tannhauser, naked to the waist and festooned with weapons. They’d had their share of wine but Tannhauser sensed no belligerence. He let Frogier feel the spear point.

‘Good evening, lads. The
sergent
here will pay an
écu d’or
to any man can guide us to Cockaigne. Are any of you willing?’

Two of the men looked at the third, who wiped his mouth on his wrist.

‘No man here knows the way.’

‘Will you step back into the tavern while we pass?’

Tannhauser didn’t want them behind him. He prodded Frogier.

‘The
sergent
will buy you a jug. A deep one.’

Frogier fumbled in his pocket with his good hand. He produced two coins and held them out and the third man took them. The men went back inside. Tannhauser told Grégoire to watch their backs and pushed on. They crossed another street and beyond it the hill became steeper. They headed east a short way, then turned north into an alley too cramped to permit two men abreast. The stench worsened.

They were in the Yards.

‘Joco,’ said Frogier, ‘hold onto the back of my belt.’

Joco did so and they continued upwards. The alley wound about, east and again north. The next round of musketry was overdue. Was the engagement over? Tannhauser’s impatience intensified. He had to reach Cockaigne before they left.

Joco stopped with a grunt up ahead of him. Tannhauser jabbed him. The instant Joco squealed, Frogier made his move: he spun and shoved Joco backwards with all his weight. As the spear tip slid in between the ribs, Tannhauser pulled it back, but the body was falling, down the slope, head arched backwards with the force of Frogier’s charge. He let go of the shaft and stepped back and the counterweight spiked into the mud. Joco impaled himself through the lung.

Tannhauser raised the crossbow as Joco twisted and fell and shot the black shape lunging for the gloom. Frogier sobbed and dropped. Tannhauser pulled the
spontone
from Joco, who was racked with wet coughs. He stepped over him and beckoned Grégoire to follow with the lamp.

Frogier was doubled over on his side, weeping. The bolt had disappeared through his lower back. Tannhauser shoved him supine with the spike. The tip of the bolt stuck eight inches clear of his stomach. Tannhauser propped the
spontone
and the crossbow on the wall of a mud hovel. Tannhauser stooped and took Frogier’s cap from his head. He wrapped the cap around the bloody bolt head and ripped the shaft free of his entrails. Frogier screamed. Tannhauser unbuckled Frogier’s belt and stripped it off.

‘Grégoire, where’s your hellhound?’

Gregoire lifted the lamp and pointed. Lucifer stood with his ears cocked, watching Joco’s liquid gasps as if awaiting the chance to lick the blood from his beard.

‘Leash him with this. Let’s hope they set fire to their own dogs.’

Tannhauser gave Grégoire the belt. He righted the bent tin fletchings and found them serviceable. As he drew and reloaded the crossbow, he looked at Frogier.

‘Did you tell Marcel the children were important to me?’

Frogier sobbed. ‘I told him you loved them.’

‘And what did Marcel say?’

‘He said: “Good.”’

Squatting on a dunghill of hate
.

The hatred was Marcel’s.

The hatred was for he who loved the children.

He who loved Orlandu. And, above all, Carla.

Tannhauser took up the
spontone
. He looked at Grégoire.

‘Let’s see if Lucifer can guide us through Hell.’

He stepped over Frogier, pallid and shivering in the lamplight.

‘Excellency, don’t leave me here. In ten minutes they’ll have my clothes.’

‘You lived like a pig. Die like one.’

They followed the alley until it widened and forked in four directions near what seemed like the crest of the hill. There had been no more gunfire, but, above the prevailing stench, Tannhauser at last smelled powder smoke. Down two of the forks, he sensed as much as saw wider spaces, the courtyards of lore. The dimmest of yellow lights glimmered here and there. It was quieter than it should have been, perhaps on account of the battle. He sensed they were being watched. There wouldn’t be many guns out here, if any, but there’d be arrows, stones, roof tiles. The lantern would give them a target.

‘Grégoire, give me the lantern. Go out in front with your dog.’

He took the stick of the lantern in the same fist as the
spontone
while Grégoire murmured encouragement to the cur. The cur lunged off down the left-hand fork. They started across the yard. Within paces Tannhauser heard a dull hiss and he jumped forward, ducking his head, and half-turned his back towards it. The slinger was either lucky, or good enough to lead his target. The stone hit Tannhauser in the outer wing of his back muscle, just below his left armpit. He had taken musket balls that had stung less.

‘Run, Grégoire. Hold your arm over your ear.’

They ran as more stones sang and cracked into the walls beyond them. Jeers came, too, boys doing their job, defending their ground. Tannhauser heard a thump and Grégoire staggered but didn’t fall and kept on running.

They reached the alley on the far side without further injury. The yard boys would pursue; for such were the joys. With the alley to funnel their sling stones, the prospect was uninviting. Tannhauser halted, propped the
spontone
. He felt a trickle of blood down his loin. He gave the lantern to Grégoire.

‘Were you hit?’

‘Only the satchel,’ said Grégoire.

‘Keep going. Wait around the next bend.’

Tannhauser watched the boys howl across the yard in a pack, seven- or eight-strong. He could have let them crowd the alley, and there have slaughtered enough to send the rest home; but at twenty feet he stepped out and let them see the steel of the crossbow.

The gang were good. Instead of stopping in a bunch they scattered like deer. In a twinkling he could see not a one of them. He retreated into the alley.

‘Go back the way I came,’ he said, ‘and on my honour you’ll find a dying
sergent
with a pocketful of gold.’

‘On your honour?’

‘Why not bend over and we’ll kiss the back of your bollocks?’

Laughter.

Tannhauser joined in. They heard him and theirs stopped.

‘The low-hanging fruit lies yonder, lads, and its taste will be sweet. Take a dainty profit before some other does. Come this way and you’ll harvest only pain.’

He heard whispers. An aimed stone skirred from a wall and into the alley, but its force was spent and it missed him. Even so, he admired the intention.

‘Your spleen is manly, so here’s another bargain. I seek my friend Grymonde, the mighty Infant, in Cockaigne. Take me there and I’ll pay you well.’

‘The Infant’s dead.’

‘No he’s not, not for sure.’

‘They said he was shot and fell from the roof.’

‘So what do they know?’

‘To Cockaigne will do,’ said Tannhauser.

‘How do we know this
sergent
’s there?’

‘He left his black guts on this quarrel. Take a sniff.’

Tannhauser stuck the crossbow out into the lesser dark. He heard quick steps.

‘It’s bloody all right! Fresh as paint!’

‘Why didn’t you take his gold, then?’

‘I’m in haste and I’ve gold of my own,’ said Tannhauser. ‘But the
sergent
’s will spend easier than mine, and the prize is not to be counted in gold alone, for he’s still alive. You can peel him like an apricot and spin the tale round your kitchen fires for the rest of your lives.’

Bare feet slapped the mud. Two shadows dashed away along the wall. Their comrades gave chase. Down the alley, Tannhauser found Grégoire.

They pressed on.

Lucifer led them with confidence through a bewilderment of twists and turns, pausing here and there to sniff or void. No passage they took deserved the name of ‘street’, but for the Yards such they were. The firework tang of gunpowder got stronger. Beyond the next row of dwellings Tannhauser saw a pillar of smoke. Flares of sparks flew up into the night. He caught another smell and realised why Lucifer’s progress had been so unerring, whether the cur was a native or not. Roasting pork. Then a more acrid whiff of burned hair. Perhaps it wasn’t pork. At the next corner he told Grégoire to restrain the panting dog and wait. A short alley gave onto the south side of another courtyard.

He had found the Land of Plenty

There were plenty of bodies. Men, women, youngsters. Some lay crumpled where they had dropped from the rooftops; others were heaped in doorways or sprawled on the open ground. All appeared to be denizens of Cockaigne. None moved or groaned; but the militia had been practising on the wounded all day. Several braziers burned and a brick fire pit glowed. Trestles; a barrel of wine; spilled dishes. A feast interrupted. Of the militia themselves there was no sign beyond the slaughter they had left behind them.

Tannhauser had missed this chance.

His purpose had not wavered since he entered the city. He wanted to be reunited with Carla. He wanted to make sure that she was safe. He had been in no hurry to kill Le Tellier, and, had it proved the price of her safety, he would have foregone the pleasure altogether; or at least until he could return to Paris alone. But Le Tellier had just changed from a dog snapping at his heels to a citadel standing in his way. Now he would have to take it by force of arms. He wondered if the riddle, to which Frogier had supplied the key, might guide his assault.

Marcel Le Tellier wanted him to suffer.

He aimed to punish Tannhauser’s loved ones as the worst way to punish him.

For the moment it did not matter why; so Tannhauser wasted no thought on speculation. If he didn’t know already, Marcel would want to find out if Tannhauser was alive. His minions would find the headless harpist; the chapel of dead assassins.

And then Marcel Le Tellier would be afraid.

Le Tellier had expected to savour his vengeance at a distance of half a thousand miles. He had expected Tannhauser to get the news of Carla’s death in some weeks’ time. He did not even need to set eyes on him; he did not need to see him suffer, but simply to know it. For Marcel it would have been enough to know that Tannhauser, faceless, would grieve until the day he died, tormented by the knowledge that his wife had died alone, and in pain, and in terror, and without him.

The wheel of the riddle had turned yet again.

Tannhauser didn’t doubt that the plot to murder the symbol and start a war was real, and an element of Le Tellier’s intention. The man was a Catholic fanatic. The political logic grasped slowly by La Fosse, and instantly by Paul, held true. Two birds with one stone; but the second bird was not the one Paul had imagined. The second bird was Tannhauser’s heart. The political and the personal. His instinct that morning had been both right and wrong. The plot to assassinate Carla had been personal; but the reason, and the target, was not Orlandu, but Tannhauser.

Marcel liked his revenge packed in snow. Tannhauser preferred it piping hot, but, perhaps for that reason, he understood and was impressed. The patience. The foresight. The discipline. A tick lived for years on the tiniest drop of blood, clinging to a blade of grass until a bear or a dog walked by, whereupon it struck and glutted itself, bloating its being with enough to sustain it for a lifetime. Thus had Le Tellier survived on his drop of hatred; thus did he intend to feed on the thought of Tannhauser’s pain.

A man, then, who placed his faith in design; in reason; in cleverness; not in boldness or passion. A politician; not a warrior. Not a barbarian; a chief of police.

Marcel Le Tellier didn’t live on hate alone. A Caesar adored his empire. In both the personal and the political intrigues he had taken every precaution to protect his position. Much as he might feed on his various hatreds, he needed power even more. Most of all he wanted to live. A man who truly loved power – or hate – would risk his life for either, and Le Tellier, with efforts strenuous and scrupulous, had not.

Tannhauser looked at the bodies of those who had died on Le Tellier’s behalf; he thought of the many more who were decomposing all over the city.

Marcel Le Tellier was a coward.

When he found out that Tannhauser was alive and at large, he would keep Carla in pawn, as he had Orlandu. He would use them to manipulate his foe. To bargain with him. To play on his love and his fears. But if Le Tellier won, both Carla and Orlandu would be killed anyway, as Paul had said, to wipe the slate clean.

As a matter of both temperament and logic, Tannhauser scorned all such bargains and such fears. He had nothing to lose. Marcel Le Tellier had gambled everything, and a man who went into a fight with that much to lose had already lost.

Tannhauser studied another figure in the yard. As far as he could see, the only one still breathing. He was a big man: big in the shoulders, big in the skull, big in the thighs; big in his pride and big in his fall. He knelt in the red glow thrown by the fire pit, his hams on his heels, his arms bound behind his back, his head bowed down on his enormous chest like some chastened and penitent boy.

The Infant.

Grymonde, King of Cockaigne.

The yard was scattered with fragments of broken roof tile and up above there yet lurked a lithe shadow or two. In one far corner sprawled a vast heap of wooden wreckage.

Tannhauser raised his weapons aloft in what he hoped would be read as a sign of peace by the lurkers. The sling stone lodged in his back tugged and he felt a fresh trickle. He walked into the yard.

A dead woman knelt at one end of the fire pit, the upper half of her body burning on the coals. She was the source of the smoke. He could see from the shape of her begrimed ankles that it wasn’t Carla. The smell of charred flesh and bone was nauseating. He lowered the
spontone
and pitched her from the pit with a hiss and crackle of fat. The corpse fell on the far side and lay smouldering. Beyond her lay the remains of a roast pig.