Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks Page B

Grymonde has promised them a fifth, but be sure, he’ll give them only a tenth.’
    Carla thought of the four children sleeping next door. She had played music with them every day since her arrival. She had grown to love them. Their mother, Symonne, was more remote, still trapped in loss, but she had given over her home to Carla and Carla was fond of her. Despite Estelle’s conviction, Carla did not believe that this Grymonde meant to kill her. There was no sense to the idea. There was no logic, let alone passion, to drive such a murder, nor any profit. If even a shadow of what Estelle said was true, then a man, a leader, like Grymonde must be a man of reason, or at least of greed. Carla was worth a decent ransom. She would face him and tell him so.
    She had faced dangerous men before.
    She had married the most dangerous man she had ever met.
    ‘You say Grymonde wants me. So he doesn’t want to hurt my friends, the other people here.’
    ‘Of course he does, they’re heretics. Tonight all the heretics will die and they’ll go to Hell, every single one, even the children.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘This is a Huguenot house. All the Huguenots of Paris must be killed, by the order of the King.’
    Carla was aware of the hatred in which the city was steeped, but this was inconceivable. Not a week ago she had watched the King give his sister in marriage to Henri of Navarre. The King and his mother wanted peace and conciliation. Besides, there weren’t enough soldiers in Paris to accomplish so vast and heinous a task.
    ‘Grymonde told you this?’
    ‘A spy from the palace told Grymonde. You can’t save your friends.’
    Carla did not know what to believe.
    ‘The time goes,’ said Altan Savas. ‘The bad men come.’
    Carla mastered the tide of fear that rose within her. She felt Altan watching her. She could not fight as he could, but she could ease his burden. She could take command. She knew what Mattias would expect from her. She wondered if she would ever see him again. And there lay her first task: to exclude all those many thoughts that would make her weaker. She indicated Estelle to Altan.
    ‘Let the girl go. Put her outside the door.’
    Altan pursed his lips beneath his moustache. ‘Please. I kill her.’
    ‘There is nothing she can tell Grymonde that he doesn’t already know.’
    ‘She sees us. The house. Kill her. Or keep her.’
    ‘I don’t want another child in the house, especially in a fight.’
    ‘She is no child. She is the enemy.’
    ‘I will not give you permission to murder a child. No, Altan. No.’
    ‘A battle comes.’
    ‘Then you make your preparations. And I will make mine.’
    ‘We go, now,’ he said.
    He pointed at Carla, then at himself. His fingers mimicked walking away.
    ‘You, me.’ He pointed at her belly. ‘The boy of Mattias.’
    ‘You mean abandon the others? Symonne, the children?’
    He made a spacious horizontal circle with his free hand, then slashing gestures.
    ‘Outside, you, alone, I can defend, in the street, yes. With the bow, the sword. They are not soldiers. Thieves. But the others? The women, the children? Too many. Many, many. Too many. In here?’ He shrugged and grimaced. ‘Perhaps.’
    ‘I will not abandon those children.’
    Carla said it without thinking because it was the thing that everything she believed in, everything she believed about herself, expected her to say, provoked her to say. Yet at once she regretted it. Having said it, she couldn’t retract it.
    Altan started towards the door, dragging Estelle with him, then stopped, his ear cocked. He went to the window at the back of the house and listened. He looked at Carla. Carla now heard the sound too: the toll of a bell, rolling across the city from the south-west. The sound filled her heart with an inexplicable dread.
    Estelle said, ‘You see? You’re all going to die.’

CHAPTER FIVE
     

The Rat Girl
     
    AS THE MAD Turk Altan dragged Estelle downstairs, she took in every detail