Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (94 page)

And none of this was necessary.

He turned his back on them, but found himself unwilling to take the next step. He had no good reasons, very few bad ones, and many of the highest order, moral and practical, to the contrary. But it didn’t sit well with him. These dogs had been snapping at his heels all night, and he had run from them. He had thinned the pack, but the rest would go home and tell a different tale, and before long they’d believe it themselves. Their tale was no concern of Tannhauser’s; but his own was. He had chided Orlandu for impulses not dissimilar; but that was a privilege of age, too. The memory of cowards and child murderers spitting at his back as he walked away wasn’t of the species he knew how to carry.

‘My Infant.’

Grymonde stopped. At this range, his eyes seemed bored right through him.

Tannhauser unslung the quiver, and laid it down with Altan’s bow.

‘Will you give me a minute?’ he said.

‘If you’ll let me come with you,’ said Grymonde.

‘You’re already with me.’

‘You are a stubborn man.’

Tannhauser stepped past the desecrated flag and into the last flatboat.

He picked up a spear. He looked at the jeerers, and curiosity quieted them.

Tannhauser said, ‘Give me that cage.’

‘What cage?’

Tannhauser pointed with the spear.

‘Load it on this lighter and I’ll let you kiss your wives goodnight.’

Several of those nearest the cage took a closer look.

‘It’s a cage of dead cats. Or rats.’

‘Monkeys, I’d say, from Africa.’

‘Christ. They’re horrible.’

‘They could be poxed.’

‘Tell him to come and get ’em himself.’

‘Come and get ’em yourself!’

Two of the men Tannhauser had shot were still alive. He stuck the first in the throat notch, and the foremost spokesman stepped back, and so did the rest. Tannhauser stabbed the second wretch in the spleen from behind and walked to the stern of the boat.

One step onto the thwart and another onto the jetty.

Pride obliged the spokesman to advance into the space he had vacated and lower his half-pike. Tannhauser evaded a thrust and as he rose from the thwart and mounted the jetty he lanced him between the bollocks and the anus and pitched him, shrieking, into the river. The spectacle of so vile a death drove his fellows backwards another step. They levelled half a dozen spears at Tannhauser. Those Pilgrims behind this rank were clustered too tight to point their weapons anywhere but skyward.

Tannhauser was aware that in this position Carla could clearly see him. Out of respect for her gaze and her feelings, he gave them another chance.

‘I told you to fetch me the cage.’

‘For Christ’s sake, what do you want it for?’

‘I want it so that you’ll tell me to get it myself.’

No one did. Neither did any have the wit to bring the cage.

‘He must be raving mad.’

Tannhauser raised the spear overarm in a throwing grip, aimed at the centre of the line, and the two there turned to flee, one into the other, and their spears crossed.

Tannhauser charged the right flank, and warded the two outer spear shafts towards the middle with a sweep, and closed, and grabbed the outermost by his belt and threw him off the edge into the water, and lanced the man behind him in the gut and let him grab the spear. He drew the lapis dagger and stabbed the newly rightmost man in the armpit and drew his second dagger. With a double lunge to the guts, he stabbed the outermost two in the next rank while they wondered what to do. He slid into the gap between the first and second lines, both already buckling with panic, and stabbed the next man to either side at the same time. Ten-inch blades. The root of the neck; the heart. He ducked and wove, his senses and instincts working faster than his brain, the killing strokes plotted three, four men in advance of their execution. Their spears at this range were worse than useless; their senses and their instincts, slack at best, now stupefied by the gusts of blood venting from the bodies of their friends, by the urge to void their bowels, by the speed and fury of Death’s plenipotentiary on the Seine.

Footwork and targets; right dagger left, left dagger right; straddle a pike shaft. A fist came at his head and he rolled with it and stabbed its owner in the liver. Trust the blades, get ahead of the dead as they fall; heart, neck, neck, gut; a knife: stab him in the forearm, stab him in the chest. He killed five; he killed seven in fewer than that many beats of his heart. The gore on his hide oiled his progress through the press. Dying fingers slithered over his skin. He turned his face away from a fountain of bloody vomit. Behind him an entanglement of woe; before him of unrectified panic. There were no more ranks, just a mass who hadn’t yet realised they were fleeing, those who would have fought struggling past the throng of those who wouldn’t, and both varieties lambs to his rage.

He killed eleven.

He glimpsed the mazement in their eyes as they died.

He killed fifteen and then lost the count as he killed more.

A wide space opened on this side of the tangled retreat, and he left both daggers in the chest of the last and plucked the fellow’s halberd from his hands.

He gored a charging swordsman and pitched him into the legs of a second, and set himself, and dashed that second’s brains from his skull with the axe. He axed a third through the thorax and judged the distance to the next man, and that man saw him and turned to run, and Tannhauser pursued him and spiked him between the shoulders at the full length of the shaft. He followed him down and spiked him again through the base of the skull.

Tannhauser felt better than he had felt all day. He felt as well as he had ever felt in his life. He felt the Quintessence of all that Destiny had meant him to be flow through his veins, the good and the evil, the crimson and the white, and it felt true. He felt true. He defied God to strike him down for his transgressions. And God did not.

Tannhauser took a breath and surveyed the field.

He’d cleared the jetty and was a good way onto the square. The random stacks of building materiel provided cover, but he saw no lurkers. The east wing of the Louvre was dark but for the lantern above the gatehouse, and another light burning in the tower. There were maybe twenty Pilgrims left, and a dozen more on the beach, but the closest was too far to be hounded. Half were headed elsewhere at a healthy pace and they weren’t looking back. Among the rest, most were delayed by shock or the compulsion to find out what happened next. There were a few still sizing him up, war veterans perhaps, but what had most veterans done but stand in a line and take orders? The dullest knew he’d be butchered like a shoat, and the best had no idea how to tackle him.

Garnier lay ten paces away, moaning under Bonnett’s weight like a badly butchered steer in his own abattoir. Tannhauser walked over and put a foot on Bonnett’s chest, and pulled out the arrow there transfixing him, and stuck it in his belt. He kicked Bonnett aside to better see the arrow in Garnier’s groin. A foot of shaft was visible beyond the fletchings. The other two feet had skated up from his pelvis and through his intestines. A slow and mortal wound, and no less than he deserved, but his death would give the laggards some sense of finality. Tannhauser looked the captain in the eyes, but the man was incapable of knowing aught but pain. Tannhauser raised the halberd in both hands, on the vertical. He drove the point through Garnier’s mouth and impaled him to the timbers of the wharf through the nape of his neck.

He looked at the laggards and drew his sword, and they turned and hurried towards the warrens of the Ville. Those on the beach trudged east, past the moored boats.

Tannhauser strode through the shambles to the jetty. Four crawlers grovelled in the moon-blacked spillings of the slain like penitents at the altar of some Mexican temple. He beheaded them, one by one, and cleaned his blade, and reckoned his bloodlust slaked. He retrieved his daggers and flicked and sheathed them. He picked up a cap and towelled his brows and dropped the cap.

He walked to the cage of dead monkeys.

It lay on its side, the tiny, exquisite creatures still piled inside it. The heat and damp of the day had merged their carcasses into one grotesque mass, multi-headed and multi-limbed, as if it were the single pelt of some fairy-tale monster.

He dragged the cage to the downriver edge of the jetty. The door of the cage comprised one entire wall, and he cut through the leather hinges and opened it. He tipped the cage over and emptied its prisoners into the water.

If all had believed him mad he would have had no means to contradict them. But the square was deserted of all but the dead, and so was the jetty, and so the beach and the boom. There was no one left to ask the question but he, and he was indifferent to the answer.

He sheathed his sword.

On the upriver side, steps led down to the beach and he took them, and waded into the water up to the knees of his high boots. He bent from the waist and rinsed his hands, and scrubbed the gore-matted hair on his forearms, his shoulders, his chest. He scooped handfuls of river into his armpits and over his face. He spread his legs wide and doubled over and ducked his head beneath the water. He scraped handfuls of clots from his hair and let the current carry them away. He squeezed the nape of his neck in the palm of his hand. He stood up.

He felt fit to join the small collection of humanity in the skiff.

If they’d have him.

He climbed back to the jetty and looked at them.

Carla stood up from the stern thwart and turned towards him. Burning wood and charcoal threw a wall of flame behind her. The river seemed of molten gold and silver. The full moon hung high above her head and he couldn’t see her face. She could have been some ancient spirit risen from the deep.

Carla raised Amparo above her head in both hands.

Tannhauser breathed deep.

He was forgiven, then, which, if such he needed to be, was all to the good.

He’d come to find his wife and was taking home a daughter, too.

Five daughters. He grinned. Why not?

He crossed the jetty and stepped onto the bloody causeway. He retrieved a serviceable broadhead from a body in the first lighter. In the second, he stooped to return the recovered arrows to their quiver. He reclaimed Altan’s bow. Behind him he heard the perfect cadence of soldiers who knew how to march.

Eleven Swiss Guard advanced from the Louvre to the jetty.

He couldn’t decide if he was too tired to run or too tired to fight.

He looked again. Ten guards.

A rotund figure stepped forward and bowed his head. It was Arnauld de Torcy. Arnauld motioned to Stefano, who commanded the section. Stefano gestured to the slain that littered the ground thereabouts. His men stacked their halberds and separated in pairs, and set to throwing the corpses into the Seine.

‘Tannhauser,’ said Arnauld. ‘One day you’ll walk across one square too many.’

‘Is the King abed?’

‘His Majesty has had a trying day. There’s no need to try him further.’

Tannhauser glanced at the guards, slithering on the gore-slaked planks as they grunted and heaved. He raised one brow at Arnauld.

‘A traitors’ grave,’ said Arnauld. ‘They did not act for His Majesty.’

‘Neither did I.’

‘You were not sworn to.’

‘Our young ward, Juste, is dead.’

‘I saw it all,’ said Arnauld. ‘From the tower.’

‘Does the King know that tomorrow will be worse than today?’

Arnauld didn’t answer. He had made his choice and he would prosper.

‘Good luck, my friend,’ said Tannhauser. ‘Adieu.’

His legs tensed as the hull rolled underneath him.

The boom was broken.

He turned and in the third boat saw Grymonde prop his haunches on the bow, and swing his legs across the gunwale. Beyond him the burning barge drifted away as the current unfurled the greater length of the boom towards the Left Bank.

Tannhauser ran.

‘My Infant, wait.’

Grymonde’s shoulders flexed as he shoved himself into the Seine.

WHEN MATTIAS ALMOST
started towards the skiff, but didn’t, Carla knew he was going to turn back into a darkness blacker than the night. A complexity of painful feelings knotted inside her. She knew he didn’t need to go back. And she knew that he did.

She took Amparo from Estelle, and cuddled her. The baby they had made gave her comfort while she watched Mattias bathe in blood.

His descent into violent madness shocked the children, even Pascale, who adored him. They thought they had known him; and they thought they had known him to be a bloody man, yet now they were appalled. They were terrified. For a moment, so was Carla. She cared nothing for the dying as they tumbled by threes and fours into bleeding piles. She trusted they were bound for Hell. But Mattias wasn’t killing them for justice or creed; or even to defend the boom. He killed them because they were there and because he could and because this was his calling.

He had hurt her by turning back. She couldn’t help but fear for him, and of fear she had had her fill. His spree was spent inside a minute or two, and the whole arena was cleared inside of five, but they were long ones. He prowled among the heaps of slain, his skin wet and black in the moonlight. He decapitated the wounded, as if their continued existence affronted his. She had no idea what thing he emptied from the cage, nor why it was so important he commit it to the river, and when Estelle voiced those very questions no one there could give her an answer.

Carla watched Mattias wash himself, and though she tried to contain a surge of love so deep it felt more painful than giving birth, the sight overwhelmed her, and sobs racked her shoulders, and tears fell down her cheeks and onto her babe. The man she loved was a man wedded to bloodshed. No feeling she might know would change the fact. He had pledged that fidelity long before he had known what it was that he vowed, when men not unlike these now extirpated on the shore had scourged the life he might have had from the realm of possibility. Perhaps it was for that that Carla wept, for such possibilities would have kept him forever from her arms, and from Orlandu and Amparo, too, and those joys she would not have foregone for any price; not even peace for Mattias’s turbulent spirit. And so, she had no right to censure his fury, for without it he would never have been hers, nor she his, and if she couldn’t love all that he was, she deserved none of him.