Read Tannhauser 02: The Twelve Children of Paris for Free Online

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