Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (35 page)

‘You’re not going home,’ she said. ‘I’m going to murder you.’

‘His Excellency is right,’ said Jean. ‘You’re not old enough to kill me.’

‘I’m old enough for you to squeeze my tits.’

Tannhauser should have killed both the students as soon as he’d come through the door. As he listened, he was confused as to the rights and the wrongs. He had taken great pains to steer Orlandu clear of killing. He hoped to do the same for Grégoire and Juste. But boys he understood. Of the hearts of girls he knew nothing. He was inclined to give Pascale what she wanted, but she wasn’t much more than a child. He didn’t want to help her damn her soul. On the other hand, her soul was her own.

And at her age he had reached the same decision.

‘Is it true you brought the militia to this house?’ he asked Jean.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Jean. ‘Because we knew we could protect the girls.’

‘How did you know?’ said Flore.

Jean opened his mouth but closed it without speaking.

‘You could have come alone and warned us,’ went on Flore. ‘You didn’t need to bring the militia. But then Papa would have told you to go away and leave us alone. The militia got rid of him for you. You made a bargain.’

Jean stared at her. He didn’t trust his voice to deny it.

Tannhauser looked at Flore, too, and she at him, and his view of her changed.

Flore had pronounced a death sentence on the youths; and she knew it.

Tannhauser looked down into the street again. The militiamen had stopped bickering and were listening to their leader. Tannhauser turned back.

‘Pascale, give me the gun.’

Pascale pointed the pistol at the floor and with her ink-stained fingers she locked the arm of the dog into the safe position. She handed the gun to Tannhauser.

‘You’re wearing Father’s apron,’ she said.

‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘It’s drenched with blood.’

‘The blood is not mine, either.’

‘Will you loan me your knife?’

‘What you want to do is uglier than you think.’

‘Nothing could be uglier than what I think, except what I feel,’ said Pascale. ‘I want to reek of blood. Like you do.’

Tannhauser went to Flore. He put the pistol and his bow on the bed beside her. He held out his hand and she gave him her pistol and he locked the dog.

‘Do you have the saddle holsters? And the wallets?’

Flore pulled them from under the bed.

‘Pack a clean dress for each of you in the wallets. Wear shoes you can run in.’

Tannhauser checked both pistols and holstered them.

‘My father is a rich man,’ said Jean. ‘He could make you rich.’

Tannhauser went to Jean and cranked his right arm up between his shoulder blades and hauled him towards the door. A torrent of snivelling and bleating poured forth from Jean’s lips at such speed, and with so choked a voice that Tannhauser couldn’t understand a word, which was perhaps as well. When Jean grabbed the doorjamb and wrapped one leg around it, Tannhauser jerked the arm higher and snapped the bone just below the shoulder joint. Jean screamed.

Like all the other screams that had pierced the city that morning, it summoned neither help nor pity. Tannhauser tucked up Jean’s other arm and bundled him out to the landing. He shoved him to his knees by the wooden balustrade above the staircase. He glanced back to make sure that Ebert hadn’t moved from under the bed.

Pascale followed him to the landing.

Flore remained on her bed.

Jean wriggled like a bound sheep.

Tannhauser broke his other arm.

‘You are dead, son. Try to leave this life with some dignity.’

Jean submitted, though, in his sobs, pain and despair were more evident than pride.

Tannhauser looked at Pascale.

‘Pascale, are you ready?’

‘I am ready.’

‘We may both be damned for this, but I am damned already, so I risk nothing.’

‘I want to cross the bridge and not come back.’

Pascale held her hand out for the knife.

‘I don’t want to remember what it’s like to be on this side.’

‘To kill a man quickly requires skill, commitment, attention to detail, especially anatomic detail. God did not design us to be butchered, despite that we are besotted with the practice. So, imagine the ribs are armour, front and back, which is not far from the truth. Here, see for yourself.’

He prodded Jean about the thorax with the tips of his fingers to demonstrate. Pascale followed his example. She nodded. Jean squirmed and sobbed.

‘Oh my Lord God, I am most heartily sorry for all my sins –’

‘Pray in silence,’ said Tannhauser, ‘like the monks.’

Jean relapsed into bloody snivels.

Tannhauser continued, ‘To penetrate the ribs, then, is tricky, not to mention that the blade can get jammed between them, or even break. Besides which, you can inflict all manner of wounds without finding a vital organ. The world’s full of stabbed men. I’m one of them. Consider also that it is harder to cut a man’s throat, fatally, than is generally believed, for here – see the straps of muscle protecting the great blood vessels? You need a sharp knife, a determined stroke, to make a cut so deep. And cutting the windpipe itself may not be fatal at all, especially for a man who knows it.’

Pascale took all this in with great concentration.

‘However, feel here, behind the collarbones.’

Pascale prodded the root of Jean’s neck, cold to his tears.

‘The skin and muscle are stretched as thin as a drumhead, even on the strongest man. Right below is a trove of vital organs – the great vessels as they rise up from the heart, the lungs, the heart itself. Get a blade in there and even the luckiest will be hard pressed to survive. But the thrust must be vertical – thus – with your weight directed down through the hilt, either from above, if attacking from behind, or, if attacking from the front, from below.’

He demonstrated.

‘You understand?’

Pascale mimed the strokes with a clenched fist. She nodded. She looked up.

She said, ‘This is shameful, isn’t it?’

‘I’m glad you said that. Go and join Flore. I’ll take care of them.’

‘That’s not what I meant. I would rather be shameful than weak. I’m tired of being one of the weak people.’

Tannhauser nodded.

‘You won’t contradict me? Killing will make me stronger?’

‘It often fosters that illusion. Sometimes it’s no illusion at all.’

‘Let me have the knife.’

Tannhauser put the tip of the knife to the root of Jean’s neck, behind the right collarbone, angled obliquely, towards his heart.

‘Exactly as I have the blade here, see? Push harder than you think you need to, and follow through all the way down. Then turn the hilt thus, like the lever on a printing press.’

‘Pascale,’ begged Jean, ‘as I love you, please, in the name of Jesus, mercy.’

‘When Father screamed you stuffed your fingers in your ears.’

‘Don’t let your victim distract you,’ said Tannhauser. ‘It can be fatal.’

Tannhauser handed her the butcher’s knife. She took it. She grabbed Jean by the hair and pulled his head back. She studied his eyes, his tears, his mouth.

‘Pascale,’ said Jean. ‘Pascale.’

‘Most important of all, do not hesitate, for that is the very essence of a killer.’

Whatever Pascale felt, it was not hesitation. She put the tip of the knife to Jean’s neck and drove the blade down through his chest as if she’d done it as often as Tannhauser. Jean sighed. She pushed the hilt, like the lever on a printing press, and severed his heart.

‘Jean’s gone. You felt it. You know it.’

‘Yes.’ Her lips curled. She licked them. ‘Yes.’

‘Draw the blade and step aside.’

Pascale pulled the knife out and stepped back.

‘Never linger. The instant you’ve killed, be ready to kill again.’

‘Yes.’ She thought about it. ‘Yes. I understand.’

‘A fight to the death must be over in seconds. If a man has the skill to survive three of your attacks, he has the skill to kill you in one of his own. Don’t get wounded.’

Tannhauser draped Jean over the rail like washing and wedged the corpse’s feet between the balusters to anchor its weight. In the bedroom, Tannhauser kicked Ebert in his broken ribs until he wormed himself back out from under the bed and crawled to the landing. There, while he wept, and following Tannhauser’s instructions as to the best approach to the great arteries of the neck, Pascale cut Ebert’s throat.

Her fascination with the result, which was torrential, fascinated Tannhauser. Many a farm boy had baulked at his first pig. Pascale had just murdered two men as if she’d been born to the practice. Perhaps she had. She looked at him. He felt a dread kinship.

He hoisted Ebert and hung him over the rail. The blood of the two dead youths cascaded down the woodwork and onto the floors below. The drops danced and burst in tiny fountains. The stairwell filled with a humid red mist.

‘Well? Were they students or actors?’

‘They said they were both. Perhaps they were neither. I don’t care.’

‘We can at least applaud this final performance.’

Flore came to the door. ‘I can hear someone walking on the tiles.’

Tannhauser listened. Flore was right.

There were at least two men on the roof directly above them.

‘Can they reach the trapdoor and the ladder?’ he asked Flore.

‘The hatch has a bolt on this side but it’s open. Papa sent us to the rooftops, but Pascale stopped to abuse the students, and they caught her. I couldn’t leave her. I didn’t think to throw the bolt shut again.’

‘Sisters should stick together,’ said Tannhauser.

‘Will you stick with us?’ asked Flore.

‘I’ll stick with you until you’re safe.’

Tannhauser felt the heat of Pascale’s eyes. He looked at her.

‘Does that mean you’re adopting us?’

Tannhauser almost laughed; then saw she was just as serious as she’d been when she’d driven a knife into Jean’s chest. He went to the window in the bedroom and looked down at the street. He was in time to see the militia rush in a mass towards Malan’s front door.

‘Our luck has turned. They’re going to try to take us by storm.’

CARLA LOOKED OVER
Alice’s shoulder at the four cards.

They were tarot trumps, in the Italian style, and had come from different decks. Two were printed from woodblock and coloured by hand, and were numbered XII and I; two were painted
a tempera
, with great beauty, by different artists. These last had neither names nor numbers and were slightly larger. She had seen similar used in games, though she’d never played. She’d seen them used by soothsayers on the streets in Naples, in the market on the waterfront in Marseilles. She had never consulted them, being wary of Catholic doctrine, though she knew Mattias had. The particular cards on the table made her shiver.

‘Do you read the cards?’ asked Alice.

‘No.’

‘But you have a sense for them.’

‘The Church forbids divination in all its forms.’

‘For which we may be thankful, for they’d turn the practice to wicked ends, like most else they’ve purloined. If you’re averse, speak up.’

‘I trust in you.’

‘You’ll have to show more willing than that or you’ll close the doors to your own knowing, and that’s where the cards speak from.’

‘But I know nothing of the cards. I don’t even know their names.’

‘Divination hopes to catch the wind, too, as it blows through your soul. Your
Follia
opened doors in this old pagan even she didn’t know were there, so the moment was meet. No doubt it is for you, too.’

‘I’m not sure I want to know the future.’

‘No one can know the future, not in the way you mean it, not even God.’

‘Surely God by definition knows all things –’

‘No, only by the definition of them as appoint themselves his overseers, so as to keep the rest of us trembling. If God knew what we were going to do, don’t you think He’d have the decency to stop us?’

‘God gave us free will –’

‘Whether He gave us free will or not – and this woman doesn’t believe it, not least as everything the clever say of Him describes a being who would loathe the very notion – we have it, which is very much to the point. Like all that was, and all that is, the future is woven from boundless small threads, which is our Mother’s genius. With each breath we take, we warp one thread rather than another, mostly without knowing which or why, because we take not the care to know. Divination is a means to better come to that knowing, and thus to take part in the divine, which is the way of Creation – the making of all that is, and all that will be, the dance of Life Her-own-self.’

‘Her dance goes on inside me, right now.’

Alice smiled, as if proud of her.

‘Yes, love. And never is Her dance more beautiful.’

‘Please go on. How can I better take part?’

‘If your soul is open to itself – and thence to you and all that you are, and thence again to all that is around you – the question becomes: how can you harvest some of all that knowing to help you warp a thread or two with care, instead of with blind groping? For all that knowing is too much for any mere mind – or its will, free or otherwise – to encompass. Too much from which to make a choice of thread or warp or knot. And so, no wonder we are so much in confusion.’

‘Yes. I understand. But if you speak of blind groping, is it not so that the cards are selected by blind Chance?’

‘Not so blind, though you put your thumb on the answer, which is: we invite Chance to take its right place in the doings. For not only does Chance encompass all possible knowing, it is, by its essence, the opposite of mortal will – to which it pays no heed at all, much as we might like it to. Thus, Chance knows not what it is to be in confusion, for confusion is part of its essence, too. Confusion, that is, as mortal will might see it.’

Alice took a slurp of cold tea to give Carla the time to absorb these notions, which were mighty, and yet which Carla heard as if she had known them all her life. She took a sip from her own cup, and nodded that Alice might continue.