Divah

by Susannah Appelbaum

  “Never knew him.”

  The driver cast me a sideways glance.

  “That the thief they put down today?”

  I nodded.

  “Nothing spoils a good execution quicker than a painless death.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, throwing back more of the man’s swill. “But this was no man.”

  “No?”

  “This was a demon.”

  “You don’t say. Mind?” The driver passed me the reins and grabbed the head. “Can’t say I’ve seen me a demon ever before. How can you tell?”

  “Oh, you can’t. Not now, at least. Whatever possessed the man left soon after the guillotine did its swift work.”

  “Now that’s news. Thought nothing could rid us of them diabolical fiends.” He leaned in, whispering conspiratorially. “They should use it on that demon queen of ours. She’s paving her underground palace with bones.”

  “You’re not the first to think that today, my friend.”

  The driver returned his attention to the road, and I reclaimed Nicolas. His skin was putty-colored, and his mouth, in death, was pulled back as though tasting something bitter. I tipped the flask back, letting the pungent liquor burn my throat, and then I tipped some into the poor head’s mouth.

  “This one’s for you, Nicolas,” I said, holding him up. The absinthe, tinged green, dripped from his severed gullet.

  “Can’t hold his liquor,” the driver chuckled.

  I smiled and settled into the ride. Darkness had come in thick, and few lights burned inside the buildings we passed. A mangy dog kept pace with us, keeping to the shadows. He smells the bones, I thought.

  “They don’t want you at les Innocents, Nicolas,” I said, contemplating the thief’s glazed eyes. “Perhaps, then, I should afford you a royal burial? How would that suit you? I was thinking Saint-Denis,” I mused. “Cemetery of kings.”

  The driver spoke, tongue loosened by his spirits.

  “Kings—bah. We have all the kings and queens we can handle. An Austrian demoness sits on the throne! She reviles the language of French, our native tongue. She disturbs the dead in their sacred slumber, gathering them like firewood for the flames. Evil spirits amass inside her palace walls for midnight balls where all manner of things happen, evil things. They march beneath the banner of the Underworld throughout their empty chambers, throwing children from high towers, while outside the city gates there is no food to be found. We are under siege, my lord. When will we see better days?”

  Better days, indeed.

  “I’d be careful of what you say,” I said wearily. “Lest you end up like le pauvre Nicolas, here.”

  I eyed the night sky. The moon was veiled with a shroud. My wings burned with an eternal itch, an itch that might never be appeased. I was damaged goods, Itzy. My only consolation was no man could see them.

  When the driver next spoke, his voice was hoarse, and he spoke urgently, in hardly a whisper lest he wake the dead.

  “I hear the queen’s got some angel held hostage in that glittery palace of hers. It’s where she gets her evil power from. Word is, he helps her build her demon empire. It’s End of Days when angels and demons share an unholy embrace, I tell you. Fallen angels are the devil’s playthings. Soon enough they’ll be making demon spawn.”

  I handed the flask back. I had suddenly lost my taste for absinthe.

  “Perhaps the poor wretch was tricked—thought he was truly in love with Her Highness? Perhaps this sorry creature finds himself always inconveniently falling in love, always trying to do the right thing and never succeeding? And now, because of bad taste in women, this angel faces utter ruin? Did you ever think of that, driver?”

  The driver, slowing the carriage, raised an eyebrow.

  “Or perhaps the poor wretch is merely biding his time,” I backtracked.

  That brought about a sharp burst of laughter from the driver. “Well then, monsieur, what’s he waiting for?”

  47

  The mangy dog had drifted nearer to the funeral carriage and was keeping pace with the horses. A gust of wind picked up, throwing the dank scent of the gutters in our faces. The road turned sharply and we took the corner quickly, and I was thrown against the driver, nearly losing Nicolas. When we straightened out, the dog was still there, tongue lolling with the effort of exertion. He was close enough to touch.

  Suddenly, there was the clatter of heels upon the carriage roof behind us. I turned, peering into the darkness. Maurice stood there, his windswept wings stretching out behind him, as dark as night, his gray eyes missing nothing.

  I turned to the driver, who was muttering under his breath, intent on the road.

  “Good of you to join us,” I said as another angel landed, rattling the coach. “And Laurent. What a surprise.”

  “Slumming, lover boy?” came Laurent’s voice, sharp and haughty.

  “You do what you can when you don’t have wings,” I sighed.

  “How the mighty have fallen,” he sneered. He tossed his own wings—spectacular golden things, arched high over his shoulders and falling far below his waist in jagged, thorny feathers. Laurent was statuesque, carved beautiful but cruel.

  I eyed the driver, who was oblivious. And then I turned to the mangy dog.

  “Gaston,” I said. “Out with you.”

  The dog became Gaston, soaring easily over the backs of the workhorses, wings like a falcon’s, a coppery brown to match his skin. His crooked smile was a welcome sight.

  “All we’re missing is René,” I said. “What could possibly be keeping him? He’s never late for a party.”

  “Who says I’m late?” the head of Nicolas Jacques Pelletier spoke from my lap. “Got any more of that absinthe?”

  The carriage soon halted. Beside us were rows of similar coaches, creaking with the weight of the dead. Hunched figures were tasked with unloading them into three-wheeled carts that formed a line snaking through the barren plot. I thanked the driver and jumped down with Nicolas, the angels falling in behind me.

  We walked the length of the path of bones to the broken stone archway marking the quarry’s entrance. I stood, Nicolas hanging from my hand from a tangle of white hair. Above us, in desperate scrawl, was a sign.

  Hell’s Gate, it read.

  “Perhaps we are too late,” said the head.

  48

  These new catacombs of Paris were no Hell, Itzy, although they came close.

  We descended a dark and tremulous spiral stair into the earth, and from there entered a long low hall, which here and there was perforated with yawning tunnels marked by iron bars. These ancient Roman tunnels undermined all of Paris, I knew. They were uncharted, unmapped—they weakened all of the city with their gaps and sinkholes.

  The air was chill and damp. Laurent held his staff aloft, and a bluish white light lit our way, casting slithering shadows of our forms upon the walls. I was drawn to the flickering shadow of my wings, their hideousness somehow magnified. Maurice saw my stricken face.

  “You must not despair,” he said. “There is hope ahead.”

  “Why, is my stolen feather here?” I asked grimly.

  Maurice set his jaw, his stout wings bristling, and we walked on in silence. Soon, another portal awaited us. Here, a short and hasty scrawl could be seen, and René—having abandoned the head of Pelletier—leaned in, whispering to me.

  “Overkill, non?”

  Laurent waved his staff slowly over the scrawl.

  “Arrête! C’est ici—l’Empire de la Mort,” he read, contempt in each word.

  The low-slung door swung slowly open, and I was forced to take several steps back. We had left Gaston to guard the entrance, so there were four of us to watch as a dark figure swept through the doorway.

  “Welcome to the catacombs, my lords,” the man said, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. He was tall and graceful; a long green waistcoat about his thin form was closed with silver-tipped antler staghorns. “The Empire of the Dead is a silent one. I’ve heard
no voices from the graves, my friends. The dead do not speak tonight.”

  “Perhaps not to you, Professor.” I brandished the head. “But Nicolas here has been quite chatty this evening.”

  “May I?” The man stepped forward eagerly. Taking the head, he examined it at once. “Ah, oui. C’est parfait! The finest of incisions, the sharpest of razors. And the most painless of deaths.”

  “Surely the loss of one’s head arrives with some discomfort?” I asked.

  “I assure you, my machine”—the man stood tall—“is swift justice.”

  “That seems to be the people of Paris’s main complaint with it,” Maurice noted, waving the comment away. “Professor Guillotin,” he grumbled. “Pain or no, it makes no difference to our errand. Let us talk privately,” he said. “The thresholds have ears.”

  We entered what seemed to be an enormous amphitheater, following the professor’s lead. Laurent’s staff grew brighter, but still did not pierce the ceiling’s gloom. All around us were worn seats made of gray, crumbling stone as far as the eye could see, receding into the darkness. Gravestones, I realized. Urns, small statues, and carved cemetery sentinels stood as fixtures, breaking up the monotony of the defiled tombstones. It was only then that I realized what these slabs rested upon. They were built upon bones—more bones than I’d ever seen in one place before, orderly stacks of yellowed long bones, blemished with rot, skulls piled one on top of the next, empty eyes gazing out at us. The room was a gruesome theater of death, and at its center was Professor Guillotin’s familiar machine, gleaming, new and virginal. Like its sister, it was painted scarlet.

  The scholar was turning Nicolas over in his hands eagerly.

  “I searched in vain for this head after my demonstration in the Place today. I have made it my passion to study it. How did you come upon this?”

  “A good left hook,” Maurice said.

  “I see.” He looked doubtful. “Monsieur Pelletier was a classic example of severe, entrenched possession. Possession-by-inches, it is known by us at the Hermès Institute. Such a possession happens in increments, over time. It is unclear why this occurs; it is as if the demon were toying with its prey, the way a spider does a fly. Or perhaps, the subject has hidden abilities at his disposal—abilities to somehow reject the demonic possession. Fascinating—from a scholarly point of view. But beyond the help of any exorcisme.”

  “All that from a head,” Laurent sneered. “You’re quite a salesman.”

  “Forgive me for being a skeptic, Professor, but possession-by-inches is incredibly rare,” Maurice said.

  “So you see why we wanted to study him.”

  “Make an example of him, you mean,” Laurent said.

  “The bedevilment is normally identified and arrested. But should it be allowed to continue, it is impossible to cure, which is why my guillotine—”

  “Impossible?” I interrupted.

  “Impossible. No one has survived such possessions,” the professor insisted, holding up Nicolas as though to offer proof. “There is a point of no return, after which the possession proves too much for the victim, who is unusually and cruelly aware of the possession. This differs, in my experience, from the more traditional possession, where the body is more of a shell for the occupying force. Possession-by-inches is like being eaten alive, messieurs. In the end, they have been occupied for too long; the demon is too entrenched. It is toujours fatal.”

  “The signs?” I pressed.

  Laurent exhaled loudly, clearly exasperated.

  “They vary according to the origin and power of the demon,” said the professor. “A common sign seems to be the odd graying of the hair. I’ve seen subjects’ tresses turn pure white overnight.” Again Nicolas was waved about. “Insects and their larva are somehow used as the conduit, and these sympathies prepare the body for possession, an unknown process—perhaps through a bite or wound, or entry through a bodily orifice such as the ear. The insect we call the earwig seems to pre-accompany any possession I’ve studied. Once the ear canal is breached, the earwig nests and multiplies in direct proportion to the demon’s own rising, inch by inch. It is somehow symbiotic. In essence, the presence of an earwig marks a demon as nearby. This possession-by-inches is said to burn; the skin prickles with fever and is hot to the touch. The possessed are plagued with a confounding smell, a phantom one, like brimstone, or the River Seine. Memory loss and impulse control have been reported. I suppose, in the end, death comes along a welcome guest.” Guillotin assumed a look of modesty. “Until now, there has been little in our arsenal.”

  Laurent yawned. “Talk is cheap, gentlemen. Show us this machine we’re buying.”

  “Yes,” Maurice urged. “If what you say is true, your machine will win us the war, Professor Guillotin. History will celebrate your name.”

  “You are too kind.” The Professor bowed. “I am but your servant.” Around his neck he wore a colored silk cravat, I noticed. With flourish, he turned to stand beside the guillotine and began a practiced pitch.

  “Gentlemen, France is filthy with demons. They walk among us; they eat our food; they wear our clothes; they marry our daughters. They steal all that is good from this green earth and leave nothing but wasteland and ash. But no longer. My lords, may I present—Lady Razor.” He snapped his fingers sharply. From the shadows emerged a slight, nervous-looking apprentice, to whom he now tossed the head of Nicolas Jacques Pelletier.

  “I’ll take that,” I said sharply. I had grown quite fond of him.

  “Beheading has been around for time immemorial,” the scholar was saying as he busied himself at the hulking contraption. His eyes were ablaze with a kind of fever. “But it is old-fashioned and clumsy, and the results are, shall we say, less than guaranteed. Headsmen are a thing of the past, my lords. Nor are they trained to fight off the demon if something should go wrong—as we all know it does.” He looked at us intently. “Mine is a machine for mass demon extinction.”

  “If only things were so black and white,” I lamented.

  A lumbering cart of pale cadavers was produced, wheeled into place by the young assistant. A man who had been well fed in life was atop the quivering pile, and it was he who was rolled quite indelicately upon the gurney. As he was strapped in, Professor Guillotin busied himself with the uprights and the crossbar, inspecting the blade. The lunette was lowered in place, securing his neck.

  “We’ve seen this already, good doctor,” I called, pointing to Nicolas beside me. “Surely we can skip the theatrics.”

  “No—” Laurent said. “I want to see.”

  “Come to think of it,” I said, turning to him. “Where were you today?”

  Laurent cast me a dark look and did not answer.

  “Hope she was worth it,” René said.

  “She was.” Laurent smiled a thin, self-satisfied smile.

  “You missed the execution because you had a date?” I cried.

  “A cute little piece—a noble’s daughter. I’ve got her wrapped around my finger.”

  Professor Guillotin, eyes bright, turned from his invention to face us. “My lords,” he said. “Behold! My guillotine can cut through the neck in but a blink of an eye—through thew and sinew, gristle and bone. It is a thing of beauty.”

  The inventor released the déclic, and the blade fell with a loud rumble, severing the corpse’s head neatly with a metallic tang. The head rolled along the floor, gathering stone dust, until it arrived at the feet of René.

  “Why do humans always confuse the beautiful and the deadly?” René winked at me.

  “That man was long dead. He speaks of it being swift and painless, but I have yet to see it kill. Maurice—if it is our salvation, should not we see what it can truly do?”

  “We did. Today.”

  Laurent narrowed his eyes. “I will not commit until I see for myself. Five hundred livres of gold are at stake.”

  “A drop in your bucket,” I muttered.

  “My bucket, indeed. My spoils. I’ll remind you I nev
er asked to be thrown in with you misfits.”

  “Well here you are all the same,” Maurice growled.

  “Why not take it up with the Convocation? They were so accommodating the last time we were summoned.” René’s eyes sparkled.

  Laurent fell silent.

  “Bring in the demon,” the scholar said to his apprentice, eyes sparkling with a strange excitement.

  We looked at each other.

  “You have procured a live subject?” Maurice asked.

  “See for yourselves, my lords.”

  49

  The apprentice was leading her in. She came willingly, Itzy, and she was secured at only one wrist with a silken scarf. She was young and plump, her skin like alabaster. In her other arm was a tiny babe, naked but for a swaddle of muslin and silk. The child blinked at the severe light from Laurent’s staff.

  “Surely not?” René said, appalled.

  “Look closely,” Guillotin instructed. “They are made docile by the silken Hermès cords that bind them. Such hand-stitched cravats and scarves are the signature of scholars for this very reason. Perhaps someday we will have a modern factory devoted to the production of said silks, but alas—they are as chers as they are colorful.”

  The young mother smiled shyly at me, blinking.

  “She likes you!” Laurent’s laugh was sharp.

  “They all like him,” René groused. “It’s that pretty face of his.”

  “I see no glint,” I cried. “This is a foul game you play, doctor.”

  “You have lost you powers, Luc,” Laurent sneered. “She is a demon—plain as day. Is she not, Maurice?”

  Maurice circled her, and the baby reached out for him with a pudgy hand, gurgling.

  “There’s one certain way to tell,” Laurent continued, coyly. “Off with her head. If she doesn’t spit or hiss, you were right, Luc.”

  “What must it be like to be an angel disgusted with humanity?” I cried. Then, turning to Maurice, “He speaks nonsense! We know them by their eyes. Dark, eternal pits. Like those of a beast.”

  Laurent turned on me. “Just like your beloved Marie Antoinette’s eyes?”