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

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