Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris (5 page)

He bowed goodbye. Pascale showed him her gap-toothed smile.

‘You be careful, too,’ she said. ‘There are a lot of angry Huguenots at the Louvre. And unlike that wretched boy you left in the street, they carry swords.’

‘Why should they be any more ill-tempered than usual?’

She looked at him as if he were stupid, a diagnosis she at once confirmed.

‘Because Admiral Coligny has been shot.’

‘Shot or killed?’

‘Shot, by a Catholic marksman. But by all accounts he will survive.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Yesterday morning. The city talks of nothing else.’

‘Has the would-be assassin been caught?’

‘Not as far as I’ve heard.’

‘I appreciate the intelligence. Now mark your promise.’

Pascale closed the door. He listened for the scrape of key and bolt. He pulled the letter from his boot and unwrapped it. The most wondrous handwriting he’d ever seen. The sight of it made his heart clench. With each word he heard Carla’s voice and love stabbed him. With each stab, he felt afraid. He found the functionary’s name that had eluded his memory.

Christian Picart
. Steward of the
Menus-Plaisirs du Roi
.

Tannhauser folded the letter and stowed it away.

Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot demagogue, shot but not dead.

A fourth war in the offing; if not in progress.

The Louvre doubtless a swamp of frantic intrigues.

Carla was over eight months pregnant.

And he didn’t know where to find her.

‘Come, Grégoire. The day is far from done.’

TANNHAUSER RETURNED TO
the Collège d’Harcourt. It was deserted. They left and crossed the Pont Saint-Michel to the City, past shops selling gimcracks and tawdry apparel, and Tannhauser decided to buy Carla some token of affection. Carla was not an acquisitive woman; her habits and tastes were more austere than his own, yet for this very reason he was puzzled that his gifts always brought her such delight.

‘Grégoire, where would I find fashionable goods, fit for a lady?

Grégoire garbled. The boy had a tendency to speak through his nose, interspersed with the growls and grunts he seemed to require to get any words out.

‘Speak slowly so you shan’t appear an idiot. I can’t keep asking you to repeat yourself, so I shall do this –’ he wagged a hand at his ear ‘– to tell you I don’t understand.’

‘I’m sorry, master. No one listens to me except the horses.’

‘In this respect, at least, I’m a horse’s equal. What did you say?’

Grégoire pointed to the façade. ‘The Grand Hall in the
Palais de Justice.
’

In the Grand Hall hundreds of stalls sold velvets, silks and linens; decks of cards for playing tarot; jewellery, feathers, buttons, hats, elegant clothes. As Tannhauser wandered the market the burden of selecting a gift for Carla descended upon his spirits. The silks on display were superb. When first they’d met Carla had captured his eye, and more, by wearing Neapolitan silk. Red and diaphanous. The memory of her nipples haunted him yet. Such fabrics appealed to his own appetites but were hardly apt for a woman advanced in pregnancy. Or were they? Might the thought not flatter her? It was the sentiment that counted; but which sentiment? He caught sight of a baby’s christening robe in white silk. He scrutinised the seams and invisible threadwork. Carla would adore it.

‘How much for this baby’s smock?’

‘Sire, this is not a “smock” but, rather, a christening gown, and one that – for a garment in which to receive the most sacred of the Sacraments – would be fit to clothe a princess or a prince.’

The merchant launched into a paean to the gown’s Italian weave, its artful lace fillings and the cloth-of-silver embellishments to its collar.

‘They ship these from Venice by the bale, so spare me the performance.’

The draper named his price. Tannhauser laughed at him.

‘Make me a fair bargain and you’ll go home with some silver in your pocket. It will likely be the last you’ll earn in a good while.’

‘Why should that be, sire?’

‘Why? The Huguenot rebellion. You haven’t heard?’

‘Is it true? The Huguenots intend to cut the King’s throat and pillage the city?’

‘I am at this moment on my way to the Louvre. If I were you I’d load this stock on a mule and head south. These fanatics despise finery and bright colours, as you well know. The only use they’ll have for these silks is stringing up our priests, and perhaps us, too.’

The draper surveyed his merchandise in agony.

‘I wasn’t going to open my stall today but we were ordered to do so by the Bureau de Ville. “To maintain a semblance of normality.” I ask you. Why can’t they maintain such a semblance? The country is run by maniacs and thieves.’

‘Does that pass for news in Paris?’

‘To the Louvre, you say.’

‘I’ve already said too much. But keep it to yourself or we’ll see a panic.’

The draper glanced at his fellows who crammed the hall. He nodded.

‘Now,’ said Tannhauser. ‘Do you want to sell the smock or not?’

The bargain was so favourable that Tannhauser headed down the hall and purchased breeches, nether socks and shoes for Grégoire. As the bewildered boy was trying on the latter for size, Tannhauser spotted a man of thirty years or so, and dressed in bottle-green velvet, watching him from behind a display of shirts. There was something of the weasel about him; he seemed malformed without actually being so. The weasel turned and disappeared. His face was vaguely familiar but Tannhauser could not place him. He had seen more faces in the last hour than he had seen in the past year. The episode itched him. Before he could dwell, a throaty voice roared above the din.

‘Ho! By the hairy chin of the Prophet, can that be Mattias Tannhauser?’

At an alcove in one of the galleries stood a Spaniard, a year or two over forty, who wore a fine but understated livery. It was badged with crossed maces and crossed keys on a red and gold field. Tannhauser knew him to be an Estrameño. As if that wasn’t enough, nature had built him to inspire fear in all but the bravest; a decade of killing for the Tercio of Naples, and exterminating Waldensians for the Inquisition, had done the rest. He was armed with sword and pistol, and at least two concealed daggers that Tannhauser marked. Under the livery he wore a breastplate.

Tannhauser walked over.

‘Guzman. Why don’t they have you in the prison down below?’

Guzman laughed. They shook hands. Both spoke in Italian.

‘I’ve come up in the world. So, it seems, have you. Shopping in the Grand Hall?’

‘Something for Carla, my wife.’

‘Blessings and congratulations. I trust it is a happy match.’

‘I’ll be happy when I find her. I have just arrived. Carla’s somewhere in the city but I don’t know where.’

‘Many a wife’s been lost and found in Paris. Perhaps I can help. I’m not without a measure of influence, thanks to my master. You’ve heard of Albert Gondi, the Comte de Retz?’

Retz was a Florentine soldier who had entered the service of Henri II at the time of Henri’s marriage to Catherine de Medici, some twenty-five years before. He had remained, and survived, and risen, in the inmost circle of the royal council ever since. Tannhauser nodded.

‘I’m Retz’s bodyguard. That’s to say, he has guards by the regiment when he wants them, but I’m his shadow. It’s mine to take the bullet or the blade.’

‘How did you come into his service?’

‘I saved him from three assassins on the street, in Tours, October of ’69, just after Moncontour. I didn’t know who he was but I knew God’s luck when I saw it. Wasn’t much of a contest. But can you guess why Retz gave me the job?’

‘I would have kept one alive.’

‘The times I’ve set that riddle and never got the answer. They use a water torture here that makes the victim beg for the thumbscrews, and beg that fellow did, and so did those he named, and those that they named, until I wondered if they’d run out of rope.’

‘As long as there are necks, there’ll be rope.’

‘Retz has been the King’s personal counsellor since the King was a boy, and there’s no one closer to Queen Catherine, though if he ever swived her, as some whisper, it was before my time. Retz has worked for peace. He calculates there’s more money in it. But if war it must be, he’s the man.’

‘How badly is Coligny hurt?’

‘He turned to spit in the gutter at the moment the shots were fired, or he’d be dead.’

‘Shots?’

‘A double load. One ball smashed his right hand, the other his left arm. Paré amputated some fingers, but Coligny will live. The marksman was a member of the Guise faction. Retz and I haven’t slept since. Meetings here, soundings there, parleys galore. What was that knot Alexander cut?’

‘The Gordian knot.’

‘That’s the task fallen to Retz.’

‘Does he have the sword to do it?’

‘The King is his sword, if Retz can unsheathe him. But tell me more about this wife.’

‘She was invited to this cursed wedding.’

‘Cursed indeed.’

‘Am I right to worry for her safety?’

Guzman shrugged, as if not to overalarm him.

‘If any lady of sufficient note to be invited to the wedding had been murdered, I’d have heard of it. At the same time, the sooner she’s with you, the better. Who is she, if I may ask?’

‘A contessa of old Sicilian blood. Her fief is on the Garonne. She was invited to play music at Queen Catherine’s ball last night.’

‘There was no music. The Queen’s Ball was cancelled, because of the shooting.’

Tannhauser absorbed this irony without comment.

‘A steward at the Louvre knows where Carla is lodging. Christian Picart.’

‘The court’s attendants number over ten thousand, with this wedding even more. But stick with me.’ Guzman nodded at a door in the alcove. ‘When this cabal with the magistrates is over, that’s where we go. The inner circle is summoned to cut the knot.’

A handsome man, around fifty, emerged in a pale grey doublet. A man playing dice with history and who expected to win, whatever the throw. He sized up Tannhauser.

‘One of your old comrades, Guzman?’

‘Your Grace, may I present Mattias Tannhauser,
Cavaliere di Malta
, and even within that brotherhood a man amongst men. We faced the heathen Turk together on the Bastion of Castile.’

Retz bowed, ‘Albert Gondi, Comte de Retz.’

‘An honour, your Excellency. Mattias Tannhauser, Comte de La Penautier.’

‘The honour is mine. The best of us are humbled by the epic of Malta. In the Queen’s own words,
the greatest siege of them all
.’ His Italian, like his voice, was refined. ‘But you must excuse me for I’m expected at the palace.’

‘I’ve some business of my own to conduct there,’ said Tannhauser.

‘Ride with me. With your permission, I would take your counsel along the way.’

Tannhauser took a breath through his nostrils.

It would take a very great philosopher indeed to explain the wars that had drenched the country in woe and set kin and lifelong neighbours at each other’s throats. Tannhauser was content to wait for that sage to emerge, though he did not expect his arrival much before Armageddon. Nor did he expect such wisdom as might be revealed to in any way mitigate the madness and hatred certain to be swilling about the globe when that day dawned. Differences in scriptural exegesis so fine that few bishops understood them were the ostensible cause for the violence between Catholics and Protestants, but to Tannhauser such grand causes were no more than the usual devices by which the elites persuaded the gullible to die and degrade themselves, in enormous number, on their behalf, and to their advantage. Diverse political feuds and rivalries, the ambitions of provincial warlords, and the general economic disaster engineered from on high, were the stronger poisons in the brew. The wagon of War was always filled to the raves with sordid motives; and always sheeted in a gaudy banner. The faithful might fight for God, but the winnings would be reckoned in power, land and gold, and divided among the few.

Such as Retz.

Tannhauser said, ‘I’ve no particular grudge against the Huguenots.’

‘Good,’ said Retz. ‘Neither do I.’

The windows of Retz’s carriage were curtained with muslin. Bags of lavender and perfumed cushions meant that Tannhauser could breathe without clenching his teeth. He had rarely ridden in a carriage and thought them both uncomfortable and effeminate, but in Paris this was a civilised way to travel. The coachman cracked his whip and bellowed at the riff-raff in the thoroughfare. Guzman rode on a lookout platform bolted to the rear. Grégoire ran behind the carriage. Tannhauser waited to hear what price the ride would cost him.

‘The journey is short, so I’ll be brief,’ said Retz. ‘There are some two hundred Huguenot nobles in the city, the higher echelons of their movement, along with their retainers. They are lodged in the old apartments of the Louvre and in various of the nearby
Hôtels Particuliers
.’

He said this with the certainty of a man who possessed a list.

‘The attempt on Admiral Coligny’s life has left these noblemen shouting for justice. Some have threatened the person of Queen Catherine. Our young King is of a sensitive temperament and he holds the Admiral in very great affection and esteem. His Majesty is enraged that parties unknown should shoot his honoured guest while His Majesty was playing tennis. He smashed his racket in frustration. He wept with grief and shame at Coligny’s bedside. He has forbidden the people of Paris to take up arms. He has cleared all Catholics from the streets around the Hôtel Béthizy, so that the Admiral might be surrounded by his own men. He has sworn to avenge this crime or lose his soul. This morning a judicial inquiry, staffed at the King’s insistence with Huguenot sympathisers, concluded – but did not prove – that Henri, Duke of Guise, was behind the plot.’

He paused and studied Tannhauser.

An assassin acting in Coligny’s interest had murdered Guise’s father almost a decade before. Like the King, who loathed him, Guise was twenty-two. Some believed he coveted the throne on the basis of a bloodline to Saint Louis. Catholic militants, and the people of Paris, adored him.