Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (11 page)

She had been accompanied from La Penautier by Altan Savas. He was a Serb by birth, a galley slave whom Mattias had bought from the Knights in Malta four years before. Like Mattias, he had once been a janissary of the Grande Turke and he enjoyed her husband’s absolute confidence, an honour bestowed on so few she could not name another who was still alive. Despite the three-week journey from the south, Carla felt she hardly knew Altan Savas. He lived in a world unto himself. He prayed to Allah, though he let few know it. She rarely heard him speak French, though he and Mattias would talk for hours in Turkish. Altan, at his own request, had been bivouacked on a palliasse in the garden. If she had understood his explanation, a mixture of word and mime, it had been, ‘If the lion sleeps indoors, he cannot smell his prey.’

As she looked down she saw that the palliasse was empty.

Carla put on a gown of pale gold linen tailored to accommodate her state. Her heart was beating so fast she could hardly think. To slow it, and in one of those irresistible whims that characterised this pregnancy more than her others, she took the time to braid her hair. The chore soothed her and the braid made her feel stronger; she didn’t know why. And since, on a similar whim, she had not cut her hair since learning she was expecting, it fell almost down to her waist in long waves.

She went to the door and stepped out into the upper hallway. Windows lit the stairwell from the front and the rear. A ladder led up to the cramped attic bedroom of the housekeeper and her husband, poorer in-laws of Symonne, Denise and Didier. Across the hallway was the children’s room. Carla opened the door and peeked inside. The four D’Aubray children – Martin, Lucien, Charité and Antoinette – were asleep in two beds. Martin and Lucien had vacated their room to make way for Carla.

Carla closed the door. Another contraction began. She leaned on the wall and breathed. The contraction was the strongest yet. She questioned the alarm bubbling in her stomach. It was the dead of night, when all things seem strange. She had seen some peculiar characters in the street. In Paris such figures were legion. Should she wake Symonne on the floor below and frighten her? Where was Altan Savas? The contraction passed but left her feeling faint.

She returned to her room and closed the door. She drank some water. She went once more to the front window. The Rue du Temple was empty. She made up her mind to go down to the garden. As she turned she heard a sound – a dulled clattering – as if from behind the gable wall. Carla started for the door. A muffled squeal, of fear marbled with fury, stopped her. Cinder fragments tumbled into the fireplace followed by a billow of soot. A moment later a pair of arms appeared, and coils of hair, then a head. A small, scrawny body slithered from the chimney, naked from waist to feet.

Carla stared at the rat girl.

The girl crawled into the hearth and coughed on her hands and knees. Her rough woollen smock had slipped up past her hips, which bore fresh grazes. She was filthy, though perhaps not much more so than was usual for her. The descent had grazed her elbows, too. Her long, corkscrew hair was so matted with grease that the soot had hardly gained purchase. The ringlets looked dark red but it was hard to be sure. She recovered with remarkable speed, as would a wild animal, and hawked black spittle onto the rug.

She looked up and saw Carla.

Wild grey eyes glittered in a soot-smeared face.

Inspired by the girl’s example, Carla recovered quickly.

‘Are you hurt?’

The rat girl didn’t answer. She scrambled to her feet. She was all skin and bone, poorly nourished, but rather older than Carla had imagined, perhaps nine or ten. Perhaps street life had aged her beyond her years. She coughed again. Carla went to the table and poured a glass of water. She stepped forward and offered it to the girl. With quick glances the girl took in Carla, the room, the glass.

‘If you try to stop me, I’ll kill your baby.’

‘I won’t try to stop you.’

The girl grabbed the glass and drained it. She gave it back to Carla.

‘You came down the chimney head-first?’

‘Gobbo pushed me down head-first, so I couldn’t climb back out.’

The rat girl went to the window. She seemed scared, but not of Carla.

‘I’m in the wrong room.’

The chimney stack on this side of the house served the fireplaces in Carla’s bedroom, the parlour below, and the business office on the ground floor. None had seen use during the summer. The second stack, on the southern gable, served the children’s room, Symonne’s bedchamber and the kitchen stove. Carla wondered how much so small a thief had expected to steal. Then she realised.

‘You were sent down the chimney to open the front door for your friends.’

‘The back door.’

‘Is Gobbo the big man?’

‘No. That’s Grymonde, the Infant of Cockaigne.’

She recited this bogus title with a fierce solemnity, as if she expected Carla to tremble. When she didn’t, the girl bared her teeth and clawed her fingers and growled. Without meaning to, Carla laughed. There was something elvish about the girl, elvish in spirit, and Carla couldn’t help but be charmed by it. The spite in the girl’s threats reflected the world she lived in.

‘Don’t laugh at me. You won’t laugh when Grymonde comes.’

‘I didn’t mean to be unkind. If you look in my mirror I think you’d laugh too.’

‘You have a mirror?’

‘You can use it if you tell me your name. My name is Carla.’

‘Estelle.’

‘I love that name. It’s one of the prettiest of all names.’

‘Grymonde calls me La Rossa. Because he loves my hair.’

‘I’m sure it’s beautiful when it’s clean. Why don’t you stay with me, Estelle? I can help you wash your hair and find you some clean clothes. Then we can eat breakfast if you’re hungry.’

Estelle considered this, with a mixture of innocence and guile. Fear won out over hunger. She shook her head. ‘I have to go. Don’t try to stop me.’

There was a hard knock on the door. An accented voice said, ‘Madame?’

‘Come in, Altan.’

Estelle glanced about in panic. Her eyes fell back on the fireplace.

‘No. Don’t be afraid,’ said Carla. ‘I won’t let you come to any harm.’

The door swung open. Altan Savas took in Estelle as he bowed to Carla. His sword was sheathed but he held a dagger tight along his forearm. Estelle bolted for the fireplace. Altan sheathed the dagger as he strode across the room.

‘Your pardon, madame.’

‘Don’t hurt her.’

Estelle was scrambling back up the chimney when Altan seized her by the waist and dragged her down. She struggled. Altan slapped her face. Estelle’s eyes rolled up.

‘Altan, no.’

Altan held the girl’s wrists behind her back in one hand. He wore a thick black moustache in the style of the janissaries, which he smoothed with finger and thumb.

‘I find a man.’ He searched for words and failed. He indicated the roof then raised two wriggling fingers through the air to illustrate someone climbing up, then climbing down. Then Altan flipped his hand down flat, palm upwards.

‘Gobbo fell?’

With the same two fingers Altan mimed the draw and release of a bowstring.

‘He fell, yes.’

Altan jerked Estelle’s arms. He gave her a look that said he would kill her if he deemed it necessary. Estelle understood such looks. She stopped struggling.

‘Is he alive?’ asked Carla.

‘He talks. Now he is dead. More men come.’

‘How many more?’

Altan hesitated.

‘Tell me.’

Altan spread the fingers of his free hand. His palm was smeared with dried blood. On his thumb he wore an ivory ring. Five. Carla felt queasy as he closed and opened the hand again. Altan spread his fingers a third time.

‘Fifteen?’ Carla wondered how he knew, but didn’t ask. ‘Is it true?’

Altan shrugged. ‘I demand many times.’ He mimed cutting with a knife. ‘I say: More? Less? He say, fifteen. Always.’

Carla looked at Estelle. The girl had followed what had passed. She dropped her gaze. Carla took this for confirmation. She turned back to Altan.

‘Where is Madame D’Aubray?’

Altan put the back of his hand to his cheek and tilted his head.

‘We must give them what they want,’ said Carla. ‘We will collect all our valuables and leave them in the street outside.’

Estelle said, ‘You’re the lady from the south.’

Carla felt her scalp prickle. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Grymonde wants you. The lady from the south.’

Carla realised her hands were cradling her child. He was still.

‘Why does he want me?’

‘Grymonde will kill you all. Then he will take everything. The tables, the chairs, the clothes, the food, the candles, and all the gold.’

Again, Estelle seemed to be quoting as if from a speech.

‘Why does Grymonde want me? How does he know about me?’

‘I don’t know. Don’t you?’

‘I’ve never heard of him. Who is he?’

‘Grymonde is the king of thieves, the king of us all. All the Ville is afraid of Grymonde. The police. The assassins. The pigs of the palace. He’s my dragon.’

Carla was seized by another contraction of her womb. She closed her eyes. She used the pain to focus her thoughts. Estelle was infatuated with this criminal, this Grymonde, and no doubt exaggerated his power; yet no doubt he had power enough. She put her hands on her belly and felt her child through the tightened muscles. He gave her strength. The throng passed. She reassured herself that this was not labour. Her waters were intact. It was normal. She looked at Altan.

‘Can we run?’

Estelle answered for him.

‘The rich think these houses belong to them – but not tonight they don’t. And the streets of Paris belong always to us. We can take them whenever we want.’

This, too, sounded like a quotation from a harangue.

Estelle added, ‘Where will you run to?’

‘Then we must hold on here until the
sergents
come to help us.’

‘The
sergents
won’t come. They’re cowards. And Grymonde has promised them a fifth, but be sure, he’ll give them only a tenth.’

Carla thought of the four children sleeping next door. She had played music with them every day since her arrival. She had grown to love them. Their mother, Symonne, was more remote, still trapped in loss, but she had given over her home to Carla and Carla was fond of her. Despite Estelle’s conviction, Carla did not believe that this Grymonde meant to kill her. There was no sense to the idea. There was no logic, let alone passion, to drive such a murder, nor any profit. If even a shadow of what Estelle said was true, then a man, a leader, like Grymonde must be a man of reason, or at least of greed. Carla was worth a decent ransom. She would face him and tell him so.

She had faced dangerous men before.

She had married the most dangerous man she had ever met.

‘You say Grymonde wants me. So he doesn’t want to hurt my friends, the other people here.’

‘Of course he does, they’re heretics. Tonight all the heretics will die and they’ll go to Hell, every single one, even the children.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is a Huguenot house. All the Huguenots of Paris must be killed, by the order of the King.’

Carla was aware of the hatred in which the city was steeped, but this was inconceivable. Not a week ago she had watched the King give his sister in marriage to Henri of Navarre. The King and his mother wanted peace and conciliation. Besides, there weren’t enough soldiers in Paris to accomplish so vast and heinous a task.

‘Grymonde told you this?’

‘A spy from the palace told Grymonde. You can’t save your friends.’

Carla did not know what to believe.

‘The time goes,’ said Altan Savas. ‘The bad men come.’

Carla mastered the tide of fear that rose within her. She felt Altan watching her. She could not fight as he could, but she could ease his burden. She could take command. She knew what Mattias would expect from her. She wondered if she would ever see him again. And there lay her first task: to exclude all those many thoughts that would make her weaker. She indicated Estelle to Altan.

‘Let the girl go. Put her outside the door.’

Altan pursed his lips beneath his moustache. ‘Please. I kill her.’

‘There is nothing she can tell Grymonde that he doesn’t already know.’

‘She sees us. The house. Kill her. Or keep her.’

‘I don’t want another child in the house, especially in a fight.’

‘She is no child. She is the enemy.’

‘I will not give you permission to murder a child. No, Altan. No.’

‘A battle comes.’

‘Then you make your preparations. And I will make mine.’

‘We go, now,’ he said.

He pointed at Carla, then at himself. His fingers mimicked walking away.

‘You, me.’ He pointed at her belly. ‘The boy of Mattias.’

‘You mean abandon the others? Symonne, the children?’

He made a spacious horizontal circle with his free hand, then slashing gestures.

‘Outside, you, alone, I can defend, in the street, yes. With the bow, the sword. They are not soldiers. Thieves. But the others? The women, the children? Too many. Many, many. Too many. In here?’ He shrugged and grimaced. ‘Perhaps.’

‘I will not abandon those children.’

Carla said it without thinking because it was the thing that everything she believed in, everything she believed about herself, expected her to say, provoked her to say. Yet at once she regretted it. Having said it, she couldn’t retract it.

Altan started towards the door, dragging Estelle with him, then stopped, his ear cocked. He went to the window at the back of the house and listened. He looked at Carla. Carla now heard the sound too: the toll of a bell, rolling across the city from the south-west. The sound filled her heart with an inexplicable dread.

Estelle said, ‘You see? You’re all going to die.’

AS THE MAD
Turk Altan dragged Estelle downstairs, she took in every detail to report to Grymonde. She knew that the thieves could not be kept outside for long.