Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (92 page)

They all looked at Tannhauser, scores of them.

Tannhauser took his boot from poor Jean and indicated his gaudy shroud.

‘Is that not the sacred banner of Saint-Jacques?’

‘Aye, we’ll not leave it to you nor the Devil.’

‘That’s what we fight and die for.’

Tannhauser levered his cock out with one hand.

‘Die for this.’

He pissed on poor Jean and the banner of Saint-Jacques.

Such a silence fell upon his audience, near and far, he wondered if Garnier could hear the splash. Tannhauser shook his cock and put it away.

‘Good as an hour’s sleep.’

He stooped for the half-pike and the six retreated a step towards the jetty.

‘Poor Jean stays here, with me and the Devil. So does the banner.’

Tannhauser raised the half-pike at arm’s length and nailed Jean and the flag on his back to the transom. He looked at the six. None met his eyes. He looked at Garnier, who apart from putting his fists on his hips had not moved, and looked disinclined to do so. The other soldiers of Christ were content to follow his example. If they would swallow an insult like that, they were no more of a threat than the bodies in the river.

Tannhauser turned to start for the cleat and frowned. He saw Juste clamber past Pascale and charge down the smoking hull towards him. She shouted after him and Juste half-turned to shout back, then kept on coming. What was the boy up to?

Tannhauser called out. ‘Juste, stay there. I’m coming.’

He strode forward, his hand raised to forestall him, but the lad came on, pale with the blood he had lost, pale with bravery and fear, as if possessed by the need to fling himself like a bag of sand against the malice drowning the world. As if that way lay redemption. He was beautiful; and the world was not.

In his hand he clutched Tannhauser’s sword.

Tannhauser ran towards him.

‘Juste stop. Go back. Back.’

Juste climbed the stern thwart, to cross onto the bow of the second lighter. His good arm waved the sword for balance as he teetered on the swell. On this side of the chain the rim of the bow gleamed with fresh gore. The boy’s shoes were slathered in the same, and his front foot skidded in more as it landed. The arm of his pierced shoulder flapped in its improvised sling. Uninjured, he might have regained his poise, but the pain twisted his body into an ungainly pirouette.

Juste fell into the river downstream of the boom and vanished.

Tannhauser reached the spot in two strides and dropped the halberd and bent double over the gunwale. Altan’s bowstring cut into his neck. The hilt of his sword appeared above the waters and he lunged and grabbed it by the sheathed blade with his left hand and pulled. Juste’s arm surfaced, his head and shoulders. He heaved for air. His hand slid six inches down the sheath as the current sucked him. With all the desperation of his own heart Tannhauser shouted in his face.

‘Squeeze, boy. Hold tight.’

He felt a tremor run along the hull as the Pilgrims jumped in. Footfalls echoed as they charged. He grabbed the hilt and shouted again.

‘I’m going to draw the sword. Hold tight to the sheath, like a rope.’

The soft leather, if anything, would give them both an easier grip. He drew and Juste held on and Tannhauser glanced back across his shoulder, his weapon concealed, his perceptions racing faster than his thoughts.

The first Pilgrim wielded a sword above his head as he stumbled over the bodies. Behind him, a pikeman, the spear point extended two feet ahead of the man in front and to the latter’s right. A good formation; compared to his own, a masterpiece. To ward the pike sideways with strength alone, if it could be done, would knock the shaft against the body of the front man, and alter its aim but little.

He slashed backhand, over the spear point that lunged for his ribs; in the same instant he snapped his leg up, a fraction behind his arm, and kicked the pike shaft upwards with the side of his foot. The pike passed an inch above his head. His sword carved the front man upwards through the armpit and shattered the collarbone from below. With the muscles of his chest and back severed from his arm, the man reeled sideways, his sword falling to the hull from his nerveless hand. The stroke left Tannhauser canted sideways with both arms wide as the pikeman fell on him. The weight smashed him against the gunwale and the brute changed grip and rammed the pike shaft broadside at Tannhauser’s throat.

Tannhauser ducked his head beneath the shaft and caught a blow across the top of the skull. He tugged on the sheath to affirm Juste’s weight and shoved his head up between the pikeman’s arms and sank his teeth into his lower lip. He closed his eyes as the pikeman screamed and phlegm sprayed his cheek. He tasted blood and beard and foul breath. He pulled his sword in hard, underhand, and felt the edge bite a thigh and sawed in fast, short strokes. The muscles parted and he canted the angle and carved down and felt a thick fillet peel away from the bone. The screaming in his face became frenzied. He felt the shaft wedged across his shoulder blades fall and hands grabbed for his throat, and he bit harder and shook his head and the hands pulled away and so did the face as the lip tore away. He pulled the sword from the spurting flap of thigh and as the pikeman squirmed away along the gunwale, Tannhauser spat out the lip and stabbed him deep through the gut above the hip bone. All this in seconds and small pieces of seconds, Juste’s weight still tugging on his left hand, then the third man was on him, sword raised.

As Tannhauser chose his stroke, the
spontone
embossed the swordsman through the belly to its wings and Pascale screamed at him to die as she sprang across the gap in the boom. She pulled as he fell and stood over him and lanced him again, twice, her shoulders heaving. She looked at Tannhauser. He saw no further foes in the boats. He met Pascale’s eyes and gave her his blessing and nodded at the swordsman he had crippled. The swordsman saw the gesture and tried to stagger away. Pascale lanced him through the back below the right ribs and he bawled and fell and whimpered in the pooled gore and Pascale stabbed him again in the neck.

Tannhauser propped his sword and leaned over the gunwale.

Juste was all but spent, and with more than merely blood loss and exhaustion. His face was indistinct in the dark. He seemed to be staring at the Louvre, where his journey into the degeneracy of mankind had begun. His hand was two feet beyond Tannhauser’s reach, his body bobbing at the length of his arm, as fragile a thread as any a life might hang from.

‘Juste.’

Juste looked up at him. He spat water. His eyes were clear.

‘I can see the cage,’ he said. ‘The place of dead monkeys.’

‘I’m going to pull you closer and grab your wrist. Just hold on. I’ll do the rest.’

‘My brothers are over there, too. I saw them, with the pigs and the dogs.’

‘Squeeze tight. Nice and steady, now.’

Tannhauser started to pull the sheath in, hand over hand. He didn’t dare rush for fear of plucking the leather from the boy’s grip.

Juste said, ‘I feel like going home.’

‘We’ll get you home, lad. Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried. I’m tired.’

Juste drew his knees up close to the hull. He smiled a strange smile.

‘I’ve seen Flore,’ he said. ‘She’s waiting for me.’

Tannhauser lunged at full stretch.

Juste let go of the sheath and shoved his feet into the hull.

Tannhauser missed the hand as Juste snatched it away.

‘Tell Grégoire I will miss him.’

Pascale let out a cry of absolute sorrow.

Tannhauser clenched his jaws.

Juste floated away downstream on his back, still facing them.

Pascale dropped the
spontone
and sat on the gunwale and swung her legs over the side. Tannhauser threw an arm around her waist and pulled her to his chest.

She sobbed. She screamed at him through her tears.

‘If you won’t go after him, let me go.’

Tannhauser had learned to swim since the time he had almost drowned in Malta, but he wasn’t swimmer enough, in the gear that he was wearing, to save Juste. It wasn’t a risk he had the expertise to take. Nor would he risk Pascale, whatever her skill.

‘Juste’s moment has come,’ he said. ‘He’s taken it. Let him go home.’

Juste was still afloat, twenty feet distant and drifting at a yard a second.

‘Why did he bring me my sword?’ asked Tannhauser.

Pascale said, ‘He said he’d heard you call for it.’

‘I didn’t.’

Pascale twisted her head to look at him.

‘You said my spear might snap like the blade of a sword.’

Tannhauser nodded. So. He had killed all four brothers.

He might as well show some gratitude for Juste’s valour.

He raised the sword high in salute.

Juste’s arm rose in reply.

‘Juste!’ cried Pascale.

Juste slid beneath the Seine and was gone.

Tannhauser set the sword down and lifted Pascale in both arms.

‘He loved us,’ she said. ‘He loved you.’

Her eyes were painted in infinite shades of pain.

Tannhauser let the pain penetrate him. Pascale blinked.

He leaned his face close to hers.

‘You and I have crossed the bridge but not the boom. Be strong.’

Pascale turned away and looked at the water. She nodded.

Tannhauser carried her to the bow and leaned over the chain and set her down in the stern of the third lighter. He heard a groan. Grymonde had thrown a leg over the side and with an effort that should have been beyond him he hoisted himself up and fell in. He landed in the hull with a roar of pain and a billow of pitch smoke.

Tannhauser was glad to see him; they could do without a dying giant in the skiff. Grymonde had concluded the same. Tannhauser picked up the
spontone
and passed it to Pascale. He sheathed the sword and reattached it to his belt. He recovered the halberd and checked the jetty. The causeway was empty but for the dead. The Pilgrims voiced their outrage at a safe distance. Garnier stood paralysed by the burden of command.

Tannhauser suppressed the itch to shoot the windbag. To the others it might be a provocation too far, and he owed it to Carla to be gone. He climbed back into the third lighter. It wasn’t ten minutes since he had left it. It seemed longer. By the length of a life no more to be lived. He put Juste from his mind.

He rolled Grymonde onto his belly amid charred flesh and canvas, and dragged him to his knees, and thence to his feet. The Infant couldn’t be bleeding fast enough to die, but his entrails were dissolving inside him. He clenched his jaws against a spasm.

‘So you’re not leaving Paris,’ said Tannhauser.

The blinded holes glowered.

‘I’ve never left Paris in my life. Why would I want to?’

Tannhauser took the
spontone
from Pascale. He put it in Grymonde’s fist.

‘Good. You can guard the Devil’s causeway.’

Grymonde leaned on the shaft.

‘May it please God they try to take it before I go.’

Tannhauser stepped past him and looked down into the skiff. It was held firm to the boom by a boathook anchored by Agnès and Marie. Grégoire lay unconscious. Estelle sat with Amparo in her shirt. Carla held the rudder hard to larboard. She knew Juste was gone. He could see that she felt responsible; but the claimants for that honour stretched all the way back to Krakow. He mustered a smile.

‘We’re on our way, love. Be ready for the boom to shift.’

He sized up the cleat again and set himself to swing the halberd. The chain had shifted an inch or two and the field was clearer. He sank the axe into the wood and felt the blade strike the bolt. He levered, slowly, and the splinter gave and the bolt shifted. He freed the axe and worked six inches of the spear point under the iron plate. He levered the shaft, slowly. Both bolts had been unseated. The whole cleat rose a quarter of an inch, held only by the great weight on the chain. He stopped and left the halberd jammed in place.

‘Pascale, get in the skiff.’

As he helped Pascale mount the gunwale he saw Carla’s face.

She was staring ashore. She was stricken.

Tannhauser followed her gaze.

A tall figure walked along the beach from the east, from behind the moored boats. There was purpose in his stride. He was headed for the wharf steps and Bernard Garnier.

‘Mattias,’ said Carla. ‘That’s Orlandu.’

Orlandu carried a bucket in his one good hand.

‘Aye. It is.’

Tannhauser rolled his neck.

He pulled Pascale back down.

‘Mattias,’ said Carla. ‘What’s he doing?’

Tannhauser knew what Orlandu was doing. He might well have done the same himself. He might have left him to it, too, but the dread and confusion in Carla’s voice spared him that decision. She turned to look at him. Her lips trembled.

In all the time he had known her, through every heartbreak and horror, he had never seen so much as the ghost of a chance that her spirit might be broken. Her spirit had only broken once, long before they had met, and she had tempered it anew, from metals unknown even to him. It was Orlandu who had broken her before, though he had not known it then, any more than he knew that he was about to do so now.

‘Mattias?’

‘Orlandu’s buying time that we no longer need.’

It was only half the truth, but Tannhauser didn’t reveal his other intuitions.

He added, ‘But he’s not to know that.’

Carla nodded. He reached down and she took his hand. It was cold and wet, and her touch choked him. He found another smile.

‘You look after our daughter and I’ll look after our son.’

Tannhauser showed Pascale the cleat and how to lever the halberd.

‘Four or five cranks, a little at a time, and the river is open. Show Grymonde how to do it. If the militia come down the causeway, tell him to break the boom and get in the boat and go. I leave my wife and family in your hands, so do as I would, and do it cold. The decision to go is yours, not Carla’s, do you understand?’

Pascale grabbed his arm.

‘Don’t. Stay here.’

‘I can’t let all the boys go down.’ He grinned. ‘I’d be the only one left.’