Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (68 page)

The one facing her was bare to the waist and he had long hair. His skin shone in strange patterns in the glow of the pit and he had dark pictures carved on his arms, like Altan. His body was splashed with blood. That was why the patterns were strange.

It was Tannzer. She didn’t know why she knew it. She just did.

Tannzer talked and listened while he sharpened a huge spear.

Estelle was frightened of him. He was sharpening the spear because he had blunted it with killing and because he was going to kill more. He sat on the chair as if he was the king, not just of Cockaigne, but of anywhere he might be. And not like a king, because she knew he didn’t care about Cockaigne or anywhere else. He made her think of Alice, but she didn’t know why.

Tannzer had an angel, too, but it wasn’t like theirs. It didn’t shimmer by the light of the moon but by the red coals of the fire. Tannzer’s angel had black wings. She wondered how he could be the father of Amparo. But how could Alice be the mother of Grymonde? Estelle didn’t know who her father was; but lots of girls didn’t. Did Tannzer have a father? And a mother? Sisters were easier to understand.

She turned Amparo to face Tannzer.

‘Look, Amparo, that’s Tannzer. Don’t be afraid of him. He’s your papa.’

She thought Amparo might cry, but she didn’t. She cooed. Estelle wondered what their angel thought of Tannzer, and Tannzer’s angel. Tannzer put the spear down and drank from a beaker. The second big man shifted in his chair and waved an arm. Estelle stepped out so that the second man was outlined against the glow. He scratched his head. She knew that head. She knew the feel of the strange ridges beneath its curly hair. No one else had shoulders like that. She had flown all over Paris on those shoulders.

‘Grymonde? Grymonde!’

Grymonde stood up and turned around and opened his arms and smiled.

Tannzer tried to stop him, she didn’t know why.

She saw Grymonde’s face. His smile.

He had no eyes.

Instead of eyes, he had big white dark gaping holes.

Grymonde stroked her hair and held her to his chest and said sweet things in his great rumbling voice, but his words she didn’t hear. She smelled his strange smell, the only smell she liked. Amparo cried in the gap between their bodies and Estelle cried, too.

They two sisters cried together, for the chestnut-brown eyes that once had had a light inside them brighter than the sun and fiercer than fire and richer than gold and softer than down. How could such eyes be gone and not be somewhere else? Had the soldiers taken the eyes away with them? Could they be put back? No. Estelle knew no one could do that, except God; and God wouldn’t. The white dark holes would never be filled again.

Not even with tears.

No eyes had ever looked at her the way the brown eyes had. When the brown eyes looked at her she felt like the only girl alive. The brown eyes made her feel like the world, and all the rotten things in it, were gone, and that all that mattered was her, and that she was good. The brown eyes made her feel the way she had felt when Alice put her arms around her and Amparo and Carla. So Grymonde must be one of us after all. He had his arms around her, and Amparo, the sisters who cried for his eyes. One of his hands covered her head like a bonnet made out of gentleness, and the other covered her back like a coat made of love. She loved being covered. But she wanted the eyes to be back in the holes.

Amparo stopped crying and so Estelle stopped, too.

They were sisters.

Estelle turned her head to breathe.

She saw Tannzer watching her.

His eyes were shrouded in shadows, but she knew they weren’t brown. Even though they were shadowed, they were hard as jewels. And yet they were sad. Grymonde’s gone brown eyes had never seen anything but her. But Tannzer’s eyes saw everything. They saw her. They saw Grymonde. They saw Amparo. They saw people, and things, and happenings, that weren’t even here. Things that had been. Things that would be. Things that might have been, but never would. Perhaps that was why he was so sad.

She knew Tannzer knew who Amparo was.

And because Tannzer was sad, and because he knew that Amparo was his daughter, she wasn’t frightened of him any more.

Tannzer didn’t move and he didn’t speak; he just stood there and looked and knew the things that he knew. Estelle wished she knew them, too, and yet she was glad that she didn’t. She knew being lonely. Her friends were rats; and a dragon. But Tannzer was the loneliest person she had ever seen. Tannzer wasn’t one of us.

Tannzer wasn’t one of anybody.

Estelle felt sad, too.

She felt sad for Tannzer.

She pulled away from Grymonde. The satchel was cutting her again. She took it off and put it on the ground. Grymonde bent towards her, as if trying to see her, but without his eyes it didn’t matter how far he bent down; he couldn’t. He couldn’t ever see her ever again, and it hurt him inside. It hurt Estelle, too. She looked up into the white dark holes and she saw the bits that were burned black, and the blisters that trickled as if his skin was crying because his eyes could not. She realised it must hurt, very, very badly. She felt deep pain, deep in her stomach, for Grymonde.

It was strange. Tannzer and Grymonde were so big, and she was so small, and Amparo was much smaller still, yet she felt sad for the two big men, and so did Amparo.

‘La Rossa, don’t go away. I’m still here, I’m still me, inside.’

‘I’m not going away, don’t be afraid. I can still see you, in the white dark holes.’

Estelle hadn’t wanted her mama for a long time. There wasn’t usually much to want. But she wanted her now. At least Typhaine could see.

‘Did Mama come?’

Grymonde ducked and twisted his head in a circle, like a bull. He scowled.

‘I haven’t seen her for a while. Don’t worry about her.’

‘I was afraid she might be a Judas, like Papin.’

‘She was a Judas all right,’ said Andri. ‘Now she’s dead, God curse her soul –’

‘Be quiet, fool, and be gone,’ said Grymonde.

His head lunged this way and that, trying to find her.

‘La Rossa? Where are you? Are you there?’

Estelle felt as if her body was empty inside. She hugged Amparo.

‘I’m here.’

‘Your mama is dead, La Rossa, my darling, yes, but she was no Judas. She was murdered by the same swine as took my eyes. She was a mad and fiery beauty, and she did what she did for love and for hate, not for silver, and for that and all, we must love her.’

Estelle was glad Typhaine wasn’t a Judas. She was glad Grymonde loved her.

‘Are you there?’ said Grymonde.

‘I’m here.’

‘Don’t leave me.’

‘I won’t. Can I give Amparo to Tannzer?’

‘You have the wren? For the thorns?’

Grymonde laughed. Estelle didn’t know why. He seemed brain-cracked.

‘I have my sister, Amparo.’

‘You brought her down from the tiles?’ said Grymonde. ‘Alone?’

Estelle felt Tannzer’s eyes on her. She didn’t dare look at him.

‘The soldiers didn’t see us.’

‘My love, my darling, my beauty, yes, yes, give the little wren to her thorns. She is waiting for them.’

‘You mean to Tannzer?’

‘Yes, La Rossa.’

Tannzer had watched everything in silence.

Estelle turned and showed Amparo to him. She looked at him.

Tannzer came closer. The moon had come up. It shone bright and craggy behind him. He made the Yards seem small. He bent over and looked at the babe.

She saw his face.

She had never seen such a face.

It wasn’t that it was strange, in the way that Grymonde’s was, yet it had things in it, invisible things, that made her tremble inside, things that made her wish he was her friend. He was wiser than Grymonde and at the same time more wild. He wasn’t as brawny as Grymonde, yet he was stronger. He was finer than Grymonde, yet even more like a demon. As Tannzer looked at Amparo his face changed, and the things that had made her tremble went away, as if they had never been there, and Estelle knew she was seeing things in that face that no one else had ever seen before. Because Tannzer’s eyes were seeing something Tannzer had never seen before. Only Estelle and her sister could see these things, because Grymonde was blind.

‘Tannzer?’ said Estelle.

‘Aye.’

‘This is Amparo.’

Tannzer took a mighty breath and held it. He sighed. He smiled. Some of his teeth were broken. He nodded, as if he had been on a journey for a long, long time, and from a long, long way away, and had finally reached the place he had been looking for. He made a sound and his throat choked. He coughed. When he spoke, his voice amazed her. It was as gentle as he was big.

‘Amparo.’

Estelle had never heard such love in one word. Or in many. Tears filled her.

‘Amparo.’

Estelle didn’t cry the tears. She held the babe out towards him.

‘You can take her if you like. Carla said she’s yours.’

Tannzer didn’t move, for a long time.

He didn’t take Amparo. Estelle was confused.

Tannzer straightened up. He seemed taller than before. He looked at her.

‘La Rossa, is it?’

‘Grymonde calls me La Rossa. My name is Estelle.’

‘Estelle.’

She was sure she heard love in that word, too. But how could she?

‘You were named for the stars above,’ said Tannzer.

‘The Morning Star.’

‘Call it the most beautiful.’

Estelle’s arms shook and she pulled Amparo back to her chest.

‘Shall I tell you what Amparo’s name means?’ said Tannzer.

‘Yes.’

‘It means
Shelter from the Storm
.’

The name took Estelle’s breath. She looked down at the babe in her arms.

‘We find ourselves in a world of blood and thunder,’ said Tannzer. ‘Do you think that little nightingale can shelter such as we? From such a storm?’

Estelle thought about it. She remembered how she had sat on the bed with Alice and Carla, and how safe it had made her feel to be one of us, even though it was a world of blood and thunder. And they wouldn’t have been sitting there at all if not for Amparo.

‘Yes. She sheltered me and Carla. And Grymonde, too, I think.’

Grymonde made a painful sound. The white dark holes in his face glowed.

Tannzer nodded, as if he had expected as much. He stared at Amparo.

Estelle didn’t think that Tannzer needed shelter, but she said, ‘I know she’d shelter you, too, if you wanted her to.’

‘She has already sheltered me.’

Tannzer looked at Estelle. He didn’t look at her as if she was a girl, but as if she was as big as he was. It was a strange feeling. It made her feel stronger.

‘Did you know, Estelle, that even in the darkest storm, by day or night, the stars – most of all the Morning Star – still shine above it?’

‘No.’ She thought about it. ‘Because the stars are higher than the storm?’

Tannzer’s brow rose. ‘You have a rare mind.’

‘Is that good?’

‘It is marvellous. You are right, the stars are always higher than the storm. And so, if Amparo gives us shelter from the storm, and you, the Morning Star, shine above that storm, what have we to fear?’

‘Nothing?’

‘I am very happy to know you are Amparo’s sister.’

Estelle stared at him. She felt Tannzer had given her something precious, but she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t feel sad for him any more. He didn’t need that either.

‘I love my sister more than anything in the world. But don’t you want to hold her in your arms?’

‘I do want to hold her in my arms, Estelle. More than I want to breathe. But the storm, of blood and thunder, isn’t over. Those upon whom it must fall do not even know that it comes. And Amparo will not shelter them. Shall I tell you why?’

‘Yes, tell me.’

‘Because Grymonde and I are that storm.’

Grymonde let out a roar of violent ecstasy.

‘Heaps upon heaps shall I slay. Give me another Immortal.’

Tannzer didn’t stop looking at Estelle.

‘And because I am the storm, I can’t hold Amparo until the storm is done.’

‘Because the storm might hurt her?’

‘You are a clever girl. Will you hold Amparo for me, then? A while longer?’

‘I’ll hold her forever if you want me to. I like holding her. I only thought you would want to hold her, too.’

‘I do, Estelle. I do. But if I held her, even once, the storm might rage less fierce. And if we are to return Amparo to Carla, as we must, the storm must be terrible.’

‘That’s what your angel told you, isn’t it?’

‘My angel?’

‘The Angel with Black Wings.’

‘Her grandmother had a gift,’ said Grymonde. ‘She saw what most of us can’t.’

Estelle didn’t know she had a grandmother. She wanted to ask about her.

‘I understand,’ said Tannzer. ‘Special gifts often skip a generation.’

‘We have an angel, too,’ said Estelle. ‘Carla sent her, with me and Amparo. She has wings of moonlight. The Angel told me to bring Amparo to you, instead of to the nuns at the convent. I hope Carla won’t be angry.’

‘I agree with you and your moonlight angel. Better Amparo take her chances with us than with those black crows. Carla will be proud of you, as am I. I thank you both.’

Tannzer turned away and picked up the sharpened spear. It had three points, for extra killing. He took hold of Grymonde’s right hand and put the spear in it. Grymonde planted the spear and Estelle could see that it made him feel steadier. He touched the longest blade and sucked blood from his thumb and nodded.

‘What’s in your satchel?’ asked Tannzer.

‘A pistol.’

‘And powder and ball, a purse of gold,’ added Grymonde.

Tannzer took out the double-barrelled pistol. He examined it.

‘This is a Peter Peck. It’s worth a fortune.’

‘Perhaps it was,’ said Grymonde, ‘to the swine I stole it from.’

Tannzer sniffed the barrels. ‘It was recently fired.’

‘Not by me.’

‘I shot Papin,’ said Estelle. ‘He fell off the roof, after you did.’

They looked at her and didn’t speak. She waited to be chastised.

Grymonde started laughing, like a cracked-brain. Tannzer winked at her. She felt good. Tannzer took out a flask, and a ball and a patch, and recharged the barrel.