Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (44 page)

Tannhauser asked no more. Dominic had tried to get him killed, within minutes of meeting him, and when this failed he had locked him up. He had prevented him protecting Carla. Christian had tried to do the same, by proposing various delays to his journey to the Hôtel D’Aubray. Tannhauser’s arrival had threatened a scheme already in motion. Yet all this was half a day before the King had given orders for the massacre. In the blood and chaos of the dark and the dawn, he had connected the events at the Hôtel D’Aubray to the massacre. Ill-informed logic had entwined the two in his mind. It was clear to him now that the massacre need not be connected to Carla’s murder at all.

Before he could dwell further, Pascale tried to lift the sombre mood.

‘I’d go to Poland. Or England. I bet they both need more printers.’

‘Everywhere needs more printers,’ said Tannhauser.

‘My father said that that depends on what we print, and that to make a false book is a deed more shameful than murder. I would never print anything that wasn’t true.’

‘Well, we know that,’ said Juste.

‘On that noble note.’ Tannhauser stood up.

They showed brave faces but he saw their dread.

‘Embrace me and wish me good luck, for I shall need it.’

They did so and he was replenished.

He disengaged and walked to the door.

‘Earlier you said we’d all lost someone dear,’ said Pascale. ‘Who did you lose?’

Tannhauser stopped. To tell her was no longer an indulgence. It was the mortar tempered with sorrow and blood that would bind them. He turned.

‘Carla, my wife, and our child, who was almost full-grown in her belly. They were murdered in the dark before dawn. As with your father, I got there too late.’

He felt Pascale’s affection deepen. His own, too.

Juste said, ‘You said you had to find the culprits. Is that where you’re going?’ He tried to sound encouraging but his anxiety could not be concealed.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Pascale. ‘I worked with my father, I can work with you. You know I can.’

Tannhauser felt a wave surge from the turbid ocean of feeling, uncharted and seldom navigated, in his chest. He had lost too many he had loved. He had lost too much of what was best in himself. Yet not all of it: for he realised that he loved these children, as truly as he had loved anyone. Even Carla. Even Amparo, and Orlandu, and Bors and Sabato Svi. He turned his face from the burning eyes that adored him.

‘A girl can do things you can’t,’ said Pascale, ‘go places you can’t.’

If he could get Orlandu and these precious friends out of Paris, what need had he of solving riddles? Carla was dead. Justice was an illusion; revenge no elixir, but a poison. To hunt and punish her killers would comfort only him, and then but briefly. Could he live without that comfort? His chest and neck and fists tightened. His belly told him the truth: comfort was a small price to pay for these precious friends.

He turned back to look at Pascale. He saw her love. He saw her need. Her need was not to live; she cared not a fig to merely live, and in that he was with her. Her need was to belong. Though it stung the heart of his pride to admit it, he was with her in that, too.

‘Culprits without number will go unpunished today,’ he said, ‘and the worst will be richly rewarded, for such is the way of the world. The best of us must rise above these affairs, for we won’t change them.’

Pascale saw that he believed this, and she saw that it was true. He was glad, for he did believe it, and it was true. Yet the pull of hatred was strong. He saw that she saw that, too. Pascale could see many things in and through him. How strange for such as he to look at a girl as if she were some blurred and distant mirror. Let her see something worth seeing. She needed that, too. So did he. He sensed Carla’s spirit. She agreed with him. He smiled. Pascale smiled in return. With her smile, his chest and neck and fists relaxed, and his mind was settled on what was right.

‘I’m going to see that Carla’s remains are secure. I’m going to bring Orlandu here. Grégoire, too. We will work together. The best revenge is to stay alive and flourish.’

On the street he had a word with Frogier.

‘Now that we are known associates, sooner or later Marcel will arrive at you. Tell him nothing of these children. He’s after me, not them, and they have no part to play in our game.’

‘What game?’

‘I haven’t been apprised of the rules, though the likeliest umpire is Death. Tell Marcel I took the children to the Ville. Tell him he and I will meet in due course. If these children come to harm –’

Frogier rubbed his tooth. ‘Yes, you will strangle me.’

‘I will burn this house down with you and your sister roped face-to-face inside it.’

ESTELLE AWOKE IN
stifling gloom and saw rows of human skulls staring from the shadows. They didn’t upset her; she’d seen them too many times before; and compared to what she’d seen in her dreams they gave her comfort. At least they weren’t moving. Her other comfort, her rats, had scattered and gone, scared off by the gravedigger who had shaken her awake. She knew him, too, a kindly sort. His mates would have woken her with a kick. They lived knee-deep in the huge death pits outside, and were a harsh breed. Her back was to the wall by the charnel house doorway. She stumbled out into blinding sunlight without speaking.

She rubbed her eyes as she tottered to the gate of the Cemetery of the Innocents. Her feet were heavy, the sleep still clinging to her bones and the insides of her head.

She’d been up all night. Her face ached from Gobbo’s slap. She felt more exhausted now than she had when she’d fallen asleep, with the rats in her lap, watching their black eyes and quivering noses. Everywhere, they took her for one of their own. One had put its mouth on her nipple for a moment, which always pleased her. She had never seen meanness in the eyes of a rat. She didn’t believe they had any meanness in them. Perhaps that was why people hated them. She knew she had a lot of meanness in her. She’d tried hard to put it there; to put in more and more and more. As far as she could tell, that was what people did to rise. The meaner you were, the higher you rose.

She was starving. She was naked. But starving, naked children were common enough, and she didn’t expect anyone would care.

She wandered around Les Halles with no destination in mind. She passed the folly of Saint-Eustache. They’d started to build it before she was born – Grymonde said before even he had been born – but it had never changed: a gigantic slab the size of a field, and a big arch without any walls, or only bits of walls, started but not finished. People used it as a jakes and for rutting, like they did the charnel houses, and for beatings and slashings, and other mean things. Grymonde said they couldn’t pay for the stones to finish it. He said they’d spent all their gold on the wars instead. Enough gold to turn the whole land into Cockaigne, he said.

Grymonde had carried her on his shoulders down every street and every alley, and through all the galleries of Les Halles, and through all the markets and wharves, and past all the palaces and fountains and churches, and through fields where horses grazed, and even across the bridges to the City and the University, and everywhere, everywhere, whenever they had met, he had carried her on his shoulders, and he had never tired.

They would meet secretly, like spies, at some rendezvous, and she would run to him and turn her back to him and she’d hear him laugh, the deepest and most beautiful sound she ever heard, and she’d feel his enormous hands encircle her waist entire, and then: ecstasy. Her breath would be stolen and she’d scream with excitement and she would shoot up into the air, and her head would spin and the whole world would change and then she’d drop, and her stomach would jump as she landed on his shoulders, her hands grabbing onto his curly hair lest she fall.

The warmth and hardness of his muscles, his neck, his chest had filled her up inside. The long drop to the ground thrilled her. The fact that she, Estelle, herself, was the tallest creature in Paris made her giddy with triumph and pride, for it never felt as if she were riding him, as folk rode horses. She flew on Grymonde’s shoulders. She swooped. She soared. She gave these flights a good deal of thought. No bird she had ever seen or heard of could have carried her, even though she was small. Lying by the hearthstone one night, she realised that only a dragon could.

Grymonde was her dragon.

When she told him this, he laughed his roaring laugh, and his delight made her hair feel as if it were streaming in the wind.

‘I will be your dragon, La Rossa, if you will be my wings and my fire.’

Estelle loved the idea of being his wings; but she knew his fire was his own.

This conviction was only reinforced by the fact that Grymonde inspired fear and respect wherever he trod. No crowd packed for hours at the Place de Grève, waiting to watch for the executions, was too jealous to part like a field of barley when Grymonde and Estelle flew through it. He would nod at the gallows and shout up to her past his ear: ‘One day you will see me ride that pale mare. And when you do, I want you to be proud of me.’

She had never believed him.

Dragons were killed in fables, it was true, but they never hanged.

The first time she had ever seen him had been at the fish market in Les Halles, with her mother, Typhaine. Typhaine, as always, had lingered over the pale red crayfish, as always without buying, before cursing and moving on to the eel. A huge hand had shovelled up three of the crayfish at once, and another had tossed a coin at the fishmonger, then the crayfish fell with a clatter into Typhaine’s basket.

Estelle had stared up with awe at the giant whose hands had performed this deed. She had found him, at once, magnificent. She did not find his face ugly, though she came to understand that others did. She only saw that his face was more. More than any other face she had ever seen. More jaw, more brow, more cheekbones, more lips. He had looked down at her and grinned, with more grin than she had ever seen. He had great gaps between his teeth, which was common enough, except that only one of his teeth was missing. She could tell, because that gap, near one edge of his mouth, was much bigger than the rest. His nose was like that of the lions carved on the fountain. His eyes were the colour of gold. He winked and she grinned back.

Typhaine had uttered a stream of curses at the giant and he had backed away without a word. As Typhaine dragged Estelle from the fish market, Estelle looked back, but the giant had gone. When she’d asked her mother who he was, her mother had told her he was a monster and she should forget him. Typhaine ate all three crayfish by herself, except for one claw, which she gave to Estelle.

Typhaine, and the brothers she lived with, Joco and Gobbo, taught Estelle to be a cutpurse and a burglar. Sometimes she wondered if the brothers wanted her to get caught and hanged; but she was good at it. She invented her own tricks.

One morning in Les Halles, just outside the cheese market, she picked a woman in fine black silk with a covered wicker basket over one arm. Concealed behind a clever pleat in her skirt, Estelle saw the bulge of a purse tied about her waist. She drew her knife from the sheath sewn into her belt and dashed into the crowd as if to pass the woman by. She grabbed the hem of the woman’s skirts and circled her like a greyhound and trussed her tight. She shouldered her in the thighs and as the woman toppled backwards into the muck, Estelle slid her left hand into the pleat and seized the purse. She flashed the knife and the woman covered her face, and in a second flash the purse was severed free.

Estelle ducked the grasp of a do-gooder and with a third flash she cut him across the palm and felt the bones. She hooked the fallen basket over her arm and ran through the usual to-do for the alley. Shouts, gawking faces. A fat man blocked the narrow passage ahead. She feinted left and twisted right and felt his fingers in her hair. Fast as a dog bites she punctured him twice and slashed the hand and again felt the scrape of bones. He let go of her hair but grabbed the basket.

Estelle let him take it and ran with the purse. She ran like a rat. Her heart was pounding and she could hardly breathe, but her eyes were everywhere – looking for escapes – and her feet were ready to take her in any direction.

Two more men loomed before her, one behind the other.

As she stopped to twist and turn, the first man grunted and arched backwards.

As he fell, she saw that the second man was Grymonde.

‘Run, La Rossa, run. Behind me. To the cemetery.’

So had begun her flights with the dragon. Grymonde had told her to stop the cutpurse trade, for at best she would end up in a slave shop for incorrigibles far from Paris. He promised to give her enough booty to keep Typhaine happy, and he did. He made her promise never to tell Typhaine where the booty came from. She didn’t see him as often as she wanted to; but he was her light. The Grande Truanderie was home to villains enough, but the Yards were feared there. At least the Truanderie could be found. There was nothing to be found in the Yards but a deeper pit of poorness and a better chance of dying, from all sorts of things; yet for Estelle, Cockaigne had the allure of a magic kingdom in a tale. Then someone told her that Cockaigne
was
a magic kingdom in a tale, and this made its allure all the greater.

When she followed Grymonde from Les Halles, north through the Yards to Cockaigne, he chided her, and always sent her back to Typhaine. But more and more he let her hang around his doings, though he never took her into his house. She had thought Typhaine had known nothing of her secret life; until just last week, when she had persuaded Estelle to ask Grymonde to give Joco and Gobbo some work.

‘If he’s such a true friend of yours, why wouldn’t he?’ said Typhaine. ‘It’s money in your pocket, too. Food in your belly. Clothes on your back. And he’s got something coming up. Ask him. If he wants to say no, he will.’