Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (84 page)

‘Grégoire is dying. Go and cut a length of the traces and tie it round his leg.’

He put a dagger in his hand and slapped him on the back and Juste staggered towards his friend. As he reached him, he skidded in the blood and fell by Grégoire. He rolled to his knees in the mire and scrabbled for one of the severed traces with his left hand. He cried out at the pain in his wounds, but turned it into a scream of defiance. He dragged the strap between his teeth to anchor it, and began to saw through the leather.

Something uncorked in Tannhauser’s chest.

His lads were down; and probably done.

He let the something flow through him, lest he burst.

Another musket shot. He turned sideways to offer the narrowest target. Two long guns. He saw the smoke plume at the crossroads. Dominic’s guards? He welcomed the rage. It scoured his exhaustion and grief. Pilgrims emerged from the side street with the steadiness of frightened men who had determined to be brave. About a dozen. Three ranks. Four spears out front. He let them come on until they blocked the distant muskets.

Grégoire fell silent.

Tannhauser took a scythe grip on the
spontone
.

‘
Allahu akabar.
’

CARLA FELT GRYMONDE’S
pain throb through the massive heart that hammered at her ribs through his shirt. She had seen many die with gut wounds. At the Hospital in Malta, they had set such unfortunates aside without spending any effort to save them, for such efforts would have been futile. The contents of his intestines were corroding him from within. His stomach was already as stiff as an oak board. He made no complaint. His determination to spare her the slightest discomfort was complete, as if at last he had a task he could take pride in. Compared to the wagon his arms were a feather bed and she was glad of them; yet whatever the two mad men might claim, she knew her weight exacerbated his agony and hastened his end, and she felt guilty.

She heard a gunshot somewhere in the darkness of the city behind them.

She looked back and saw nothing. They had turned north towards the river. She looked ahead. Hugon was bent under the weight of his baggage. Both lanterns clanked in one hand; he hefted her violl in the other. She would have left the violl, and so would Mattias, but her instinct knew why Hugon had chosen to bring it. He wasn’t going to abandon a dream. The twins they called the Mice walked behind him. Pascale had disappeared.

‘Grymonde, please, set me down. I can walk.’

‘Carla, prithee. If I set you down I will kneel in the dirt and wait for your husband to kill me.’ He took a breath. ‘A shame I would rather forego.’

‘He’ll help you to the quay.’

‘If he hadn’t needed me to replace that old grey mare, he’d have cut my throat with no more thought than he’ll waste on cutting hers.’

Carla did not dispute this. ‘You shouldn’t talk.’

‘It’s the last conversation I’ll ever have. And more precious than all the conversation I had in my life. Though, since most was of a base nature, perhaps that’s saying little.’

‘I don’t believe that from someone raised by Alice.’

‘Didn’t we have precious conversations, too?’ asked Estelle.

‘Is a dying man to be denied his morbid rhetoric?’

Carla couldn’t help but study Grymonde’s face; it was inches from hers. His strange yeasty smell came off him in waves. Sweat ran down his brow and funnelled into the ridges melted in his sockets, from whose roofs the drips fell to pool in the scarred floors. Runnels spilled over his cheeks as he took each step. She remembered the wild brown eyes that had spared her life on a whim. More than a whim. Her baby had been born into his murderous hands. The brown eyes were gone, and the murderous hands were carrying them both through as dark a night as anyone alive could have known. It was a story she didn’t understand; for some other, untold, story lay underneath it; but one day she would. The stories were in her.

‘What does he mean?’ asked Estelle, from above Grymonde’s head.

‘He means he overstates his case, as a means to ignoring our advice.’

‘Very well, I give in. You’re both right. My mother’s words I didn’t listen to, though I heard them And your words, La Rossa, were the crown jewels of my kingdom.’

‘Truly?’ demanded Estelle.

Carla looked up at her fierce little face.

‘I remember every word you ever spoke, for I played them in my mind like music on many a dark night, and on many a sunny day, and the day and the night both were made brighter.’

‘I remember them, too,’ said Estelle. ‘But I bet you can’t remember every one.’

Grymonde bared his teeth at Carla, in what she supposed was a grin.

‘Just the same as the grandmother.’

Carla said, ‘So you still won’t say what you know.’

‘I know what we have, now, she and I. We don’t want our wings to become limbs. One day, perhaps, but I’ll leave you to be the judge of that. If you’ll do that for me.’

Carla swallowed on a sudden sob. She nodded. He couldn’t see, but he felt her.

‘Carla, why doesn’t he say what he means?’

‘He does say what he means. I’ll explain when we get home. When you’re older.’

Estelle considered this.

‘Does that mean home is very, very far away?’

Grymonde laughed. Carla laughed, too. Pain cut them both short.

‘It’s far but not that far,’ said Carla. ‘I’m happy you’re coming.’

‘Tannzer said I could carry Amparo home.’

‘You already have,’ said Carla. ‘And you’ll carry her farther still.’

‘It was the wren saved us, if you think about it,’ said Grymonde.

Carla did. It was true; in many ways. She wondered if Grymonde would have killed her if she hadn’t been pregnant. She wondered if that was what he meant. She didn’t ask.

‘Not the wren, the nightingale,’ said Estelle.

‘I’ve never seen a nightingale, and nor have you, but I can tell a wren when I see one.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Can you?’

‘No,’ said Estelle, ‘but you can’t see Amparo and I can.’

‘Exactly, my darling, which is why I see a wren in my brain. As long as the wren is alive, we’re winning.’

Pascale emerged from the dark.

‘Militia have come through the houses. We’ll cut across the market.’

Carla looked across a broad patch of cobbled ground. They would be exposed.

‘It’s shorter,’ said Pascale. ‘That light by the stable, and we’re almost there.’

She waved Hugon towards a glow and Hugon seemed to think it a fair idea. Estelle somehow turned Grymonde after him, and they moved out across the paled cobbles.

Pascale skipped beside them, looking back and forth through the dark like some feral cat: absolutely afraid, absolutely alive, absolutely determined to get through the night.

‘The cards, you see,’ said Grymonde. ‘My mother said it was bad luck to look at another’s draw, for you don’t know what it is you’re looking at, and you’ll read only your own doom. How right she was. But I won’t say the judgement has been harsh, for I deserved worse.’ His teeth gaped into Carla’s face. ‘In fact, I’d say it’s been generous.’

‘How could it not be generous to the king of the Land of Plenty?’

‘Too late the king, and too late the plenty, and yet –’

Grymonde’s head turned this way and that, as if comparing a series of paintings in the gallery of his mind. Carla wondered if his knowledge of himself somehow ran in parallel with Alice’s knowledge of the world, and thus they had never crossed. He had never listened to her. Because the only thing about which he knew more than Alice was him, and, from knowing that, he had tried to protect her. Grymonde shrugged what was left of his brows.

‘It’s not the death I wished for. I’ve killed no one and the prospects are grim.’

‘You killed Rody,’ said Estelle.

‘But you shot him first, so he doesn’t enter my reckoning.’

‘I shot the bravo, too, remember? But Tannzer killed him, so who enters that reckoning?

‘Tannzer wouldn’t claim it.’ He sniffed. ‘But, then, he can afford not to.’

‘Oh, but I killed Papin all by myself. And Irène.’

Pascale seemed as shocked as Carla, though not at all appalled.

‘You killed Irène?’ said Pascale.

‘Who was Irène?’ asked Grymonde.

‘In the heart,’ said Estelle. ‘You can ask Tannzer. He said “Good”.’

‘I suppose that’s all we need to know,’ said Grymonde.

‘There was the creature under the wagon, too,’ conceded Pascale.

‘Of course! I’d forgotten Petit Christian. He really deserved it.’

Pascale said, ‘They all deserve it.’

Carla sensed the fear that Pascale must have endured for most of her life, and the cruelty that had taken its place. Mattias had hatched these children into killers. He must have had strong reason. He had steered Orlandu clear of violence. She hadn’t dwelled on Orlandu or where he might be for hours. Before she could do so, Pascale lunged away and vanished.

‘Stop in the name of the King!’

Carla looked back over Grymonde’s shoulder. Two men carrying swords were advancing across the market ground from the west. One held a torch.

Neither Carla nor Grymonde could run. To try would invite attack. She had to induce them to take her, and themselves, into the path of Mattias.

‘Grymonde, stop. Don’t turn until I signal, just so.’

She clenched her leg on his arm. He nodded.

‘If I signal again, give voice to your anguish.’

‘And the wren?’ asked Grymonde.

‘Your anguish won’t harm her.’ She called out. ‘Officers! Quickly, come here!’

The two militiamen broke into a trot. A good start. They slowed as they got close. She didn’t recognise them but they wore red and white ribbons, and might have taken part in the attack on Cockaigne.

‘I am the Comtesse de La Penautier. Take me to Bernard Garnier at once.’

She flexed her knee and Grymonde turned about. The men stopped short.

‘Jesus Christ on the Cross.’

Their swords came up and wavered.

‘That’s him. That’s the Infant. Or it’s his ghost.’

‘Is the beggar’s brat a ghost, too?’

‘Messieurs, we don’t have much time. Ghost he may be, but while he carries me he seems docile. I fear his temper if he should be made to set me down.’

She clenched her leg again. Grymonde let out a howl so haunting she felt as if her heart would halt from pity. She looked down and saw Amparo open her eyes. They gazed up into the spangled sky as if searching for the source, as if so awful and beautiful a sound could only have its origin in those infinitely distant fires. She showed no distress, only wonder.

The swordsmen retreated. In the light of their torch, Pascale appeared behind them. The girl’s rashness alarmed Carla. She couldn’t stop her. She held their attention.

‘Estelle, if she be the subject of your slanders, is my daughter, but your apologies can wait. If my good Captain Garnier is not close by, I suggest you take us to Notre-Dame.’

The gunshot startled Amparo into trembling. The torchbearer folded like damp cloth, a black fountain spouting from the smoke that engulfed the back of his skull. Even as he fell, Pascale sprang back and aside. The other soldier turned with a forehand swipe of his sword and missed her by a yard. Pascale darted in behind the arc, Grymonde’s pistol extended in two hands, and shot him beneath the ribcage from such close range the muzzle blast ballooned his tunic and flames lanced out through its fabric. At once she sprang away again, like some juvenile harpy sent to practise her antics. Her victim reeled and toppled with a gasped blasphemy.

Carla scanned the edges of the square and saw no one. She saw Pascale doing the same. Their eyes met for a moment in the flicker of the torch flames on the ground.

Pascale drew on what was dark in Mattias; Carla drew on what was light.

Pascale’s face broke into an eager, girlish smile. She wanted to be liked.

Amparo was crying. Carla turned away to comfort her.

Pascale ran over, breathless with elation, and offered the smoking pistol to Carla.

‘Gramercy, madame. Your stratagem was better crafted than mine, and made my work easy. Now I need my hands free. Will you carry this?’

‘I’ll carry it,’ said Estelle. ‘It’s a Peter Peck, and it’s mine anyway, Tannzer said so.’

Pascale hid a stab of pique behind fluttered lashes and gave her the gun.

‘Girls contend with fiends while I make faces like a clown,’ said Grymonde. ‘Was this in the cards?’

‘Alice put great store in the Lunatic,’ said Carla.

‘I thank both of you for that,’ he said, his bitterness no less sharp.

‘Grymonde, go,’ said Pascale. ‘Hugon’s waiting.’

‘Pray give him no weapons, for if he too –’

‘Go,’ said Estelle.

She kicked Grymonde in the armpit with one heel and rested the weight of the pistol on his head. He chuckled at some inner fancy and set off. Amparo quieted in her animal skin and Carla looked back to watch Pascale as they stumped away.

The girl picked up a sword. The torchbearer had doubled back on his knees as he crumpled. His head still smoked from the rear, as if that substance had been all it had contained. Pascale jammed the sword into his chest and threw her weight into an extra shove to make sure it would stand upright. She walked past the fallen torch to the other man.

The girl was leaving them to be discovered with their own weapons stuck through them. She was doing what she thought Mattias would do.

Carla was disturbed. She could almost see Pascale thinking as she took the second sword in both hands and stood over its owner, who was struggling up onto his elbows. He craned his neck to look up at her. The two figures glimmered in the light reflected from the cobbles. They seemed like actors in some story from the Bible’s oldest books. Pascale raised the sword in both hands and Carla thought she would try to decapitate him. Instead she took a step and chopped through both his Achilles tendons. His legs kicked up and fell as he screamed. She raised the sword again in a dagger grip and stepped astride him.

Carla turned away. Another scream followed, more outraged than the last. It jarred her, confused her. She had no feeling for the soldier. But his cry somehow told her that Pascale shared something with Mattias that she did not.