A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  Does it seem to you that such an experience would inevitably drive its victim mad? If you think so, you do not know Radu.

  As I started to explain above, before I wandered somewhat off the point, my arrangements for Radu's burial in 1705 included having his head cut off before he went into the coffin. This operation of course was performed, as I am sure you realize if you have kept up with me this far, with no intention of killing the dear boy outright. I made sure that his shortening was accomplished by a steel blade, with nothing in the least wooden about it. (In a later chapter we will have further occasion to contemplate the fact that if a vampire is decapitated by an irresistible force borne in metal—the very description of the guillotine—then the head and body are decisively severed, but not killed.)

  Yes, it is virtually impossible for metal to inflict deadly harm upon a nosferatu. Yet massive force, such as the traditional guillotine is designed to apply, can achieve a separation. Under proper conditions each component of the maimed body could be counted on to survive for a long time, and if the two parts were left where one might come in contact with the other, they would inevitably get back together. On the other hand, if they were separated inside their coffin by a wooden barrier, I felt perfectly confident that they—he—could survive indefinitely, howbeit in an incapacitated state, until the barrier was breached, inevitably by time, or sooner or later by the inadvertent action of gravediggers legitimate or otherwise; and the two parts could toil and claw themselves together… thus, Father, did I ease my conscience with regard to my oath to you. I had not killed Radu, whose head and body would someday reunite.

  With a wish to keep the whole business as thoroughly out of sight and mind as possible, I caused my brother's mortal parts, vitally dismembered but still undead, to be conveyed into a distant land for burial. This tactic put a broad girdle of the sea, twenty miles at least of salt, tide-flowing water, as a barrier between Radu and his homeland—and, as I had thought, between him and most of his breathing minions of that century. My oath required, of course, that a portion of our native soil sufficient to enable him to survive be buried with him. The logistics of it all were every bit as hard as you might think.

  I relied upon hypnosis, aided by a judiciously measured dose of a certain peculiar substance left over from the Borgia pharmacology (at its most productive three hundred years earlier), to make sure that my brother was properly entranced. His mind was programmed, as it were, to experience a number of unpleasant dreams, or more precisely one dream only, repeated and repeated.

  As for myself, my long immunity to fear in waking life has left me, ever since my childhood, proof against nightmares in the life of sleep. Radu therefore could not hope to impose upon his elder brother the same punishment of bad dreams that I inflicted upon him.

  Of one thing I could be entirely certain: Radu was going to be terribly angry when he awakened after experiencing such a penalty. Constantia thought it necessary to warn me of the fact. But I shrugged, and reminded her that when my errant brother got out of his partitioned coffin, he was going to be murderously angry anyway, at me and at the world. Homicidal animosity was his ordinary state. And I could not make his state of mind my chief concern. Even had it been possible for me to disregard my oath to our father, simple justice required that he be punished for his misdeeds. Of course with authority came responsibility. Chastisement, sometimes severe, was not only permissible, it was sometimes required under the terms of my promise—with the proviso that any correction always stopped safely short of capital punishment.

  Have I forgotten to mention that a beating with a wooden cane was also part of the just punishment inflicted? I had employed that method several times, on earlier occasions, and had gained no permanent advantage thereby. At each impact, my cowardly brother screamed unashamedly with pain and fear—the beating naturally took place at a time when his lungs were still connected to his mouth, and the nerves of his spinal column to his brain. At intervals between screams (well, he knew how I detested screams, and I am sure he meant them to annoy me!), he sobbed that he had seen the light, and was now determined on reform. Even had that claim been true—and I knew better than to believe it—it would have had no bearing on the justice of the ongoing punishment.

  The chronic difficulty which I faced was that the culprit would heal with great rapidity from any physical punishment I might inflict—anything short of the ultimate and forbidden sanction of the great true death.

  In any case, I found the news that Radu had returned to the world in 1790 vexing, to say the least.

  Mentally reviewing my available options in dealing with my younger sibling, I found that they were, as before, severely restricted by the vow our father had extracted from me as an adolescent.

  Father had been satisfied, even pleased, by my willingness to pledge my honor in the cause of duty.

  Following my own version of the Golden Rule, I thought that for my own sake I had better locate Radu, if that was at all possible. Before he located me.

  I confess that I began the effort with no methodical plan. For a time my chief hope was to run across some lesser vampire who might give me a clue as to where Radu could be found. Still, I more than half expected to discover my brother himself gloating over fresh corpses, the day's harvest of Sanson's guillotine. Of course the blood so prodigally wasted there would be stale, chill, clotting, well past its peak of flavor and nourishment. But there would be in what was left a tang of despair, of ultimate fear. It was suffering, and the evidence of suffering, that attracted Radu more than blood.

  Actually Radu could tell, by the shadings of flavor in the blood, that some of these condemned had gone to their doom tranquilly, at peace with the world that was about to eject them. Or at least he had convinced himself that it was so.

  In 1792, beginning a methodical attempt to locate my younger sibling, and knowing his penchant for cities, the bigger the better, I thought I could not do better than to spend some time in Paris, then indisputably the greatest metropolis of Europe. I had not visited France for some time—there is something in widespread and oppressive poverty that depresses the spirit of the onlooker.

  During the last decades of the eighteenth century it had appeared to me, as it did to many another observer, that a great social upheaval impended in France. Since 1789 I had been convinced that something of the kind was imminent. I think my claim as I make it now is not mere hindsight. A society of such archetypal injustice and widespread desperation was doomed to fail. The monarchy was stupid and inert, oppressive accidentally and lazily rather than efficiently. Everyone who had eyes to see and ears to hear, and who thought about the matter at all, must have seen that the old world was straining and struggling to give birth to something new. But until the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the virtual imprisonment of the king and queen which soon followed, I, and many others, had not bestowed on these phenomena the attention they deserved; we nosferatu tend to believe that politics and social structures among the breathers have only marginal effect upon our lives. The truth is that I viewed the impending cataclysm rather smugly as regards its effect upon myself.

  How wrong I was.

  The sprawling palace of the Tuileries, and the extensive gardens adjoining, lay between the Rue de Rivoli and the north bank of the Seine. A year or two before I came to those gardens looking for my brother, they had been a favorite strolling place of the French king, Louis XVI (who was always much more interested in his hobby of locksmithing, and in hunting, than in politics), and his queen, Marie Antoinette (an unhappy Austrian spendthrift, who never quite understood anything that was going on). Often the royal couple had been accompanied on these walks by their two small children.

  But in France those apparently tranquil days were gone, never to return. Of late the royal family had not been much seen by the public, except on the several occasions when their privacy had been invaded by an angry mob.

  That August morning, unpleasantly warm and humid, found me not in the best of tempers
; I had been out since around midnight, looking for Radu as usual, and had prolonged my search well into the hours which were counted by sundials. Throughout most of that summer I had spent a great many of my waking hours trying to locate my brother, and with Radu on my mind, what sleep I managed to obtain tended to be very light indeed.

  Wearing my customary daytime costume of broad hat and a flowing cloak, making my way uncomfortably through summer sunlight from one spot of shade to the next, I gradually progressed along the edge of the vast garden of the Tuileries.

  On the tenth of August the traditional function of the place as a parade ground for fashionable strollers had been violently pre-empted. This time the mob was vastly greater than before. There had been cannon fire, and a fierce fight with the Swiss Guards, mercenaries who were more loyal to the French crown than the French themselves were turning out to be.

  From a distance of thirty yards or so, I observed, with disapproval, that the spot I had chosen as my next observation post was already occupied. There beneath a chestnut tree stood with folded arms a lone male figure with a bearing at once youthful and military, though at the moment in rather shabby though well-cut civilian clothes. Here was one man not trying to emulate the Revolutionary prototype of the sans-culotte—no red cap or huge mustache or workman's carmagnole jacket for him.

  This young man, whose bearing and attitude suggested an army officer in mufti, was sheltering on the fringe of the park surrounding the besieged palace on that bright, hot August, day, in the very spot where I had determined to establish my observation post. I could not tell whether he had noticed me or not; his attention was intensely concentrated on the events taking place in the broad garden space before the palace of the Tuileries.

  The Swiss Guards had looked magnificent in their uniforms of gold, white, and red. And they had fought well, until betrayed by the catastrophic ineptitude of their commanders. And now the fight as such was over, and they were being slaughtered by the mob.

  As I discovered later, my instincts were not at fault. Only a little earlier, Brother Radu had indeed been gleefully observing the slaughter in those green and pleasant gardens, and even playing some small part in it himself. And he intended to come back. It was hard to believe that the simple smell of human blood carried on the evening breeze would not have attracted him. There were gallons of blood for the taking, from bodies only freshly dead or still barely alive. Having selected the site of my ambush, I waited for a chance to seize him unobserved.

  But I was not the only one in the neighborhood who had determined to have a good view of the horrors, while staying far enough away from them to escape direct involvement. Two of us at least had exercised a canny skill in picking out the perfect vantage point for observation.

  At first my accidental companion and I regarded each other with considerable suspicion; but it was after all fairly obvious that we both were interested in seeing what was happening, and neither of us minded to take part.

  Nor was either of us given to wasting time in hand-wringing or uttering expressions of dread and loathing. Each for his own reasons had come to the conclusion that he would not attempt to interfere with what was happening upon those sunlit lawns and miniature glades, and that was that.

  But we could hardly fail to acknowledge each other's presence somehow. Presently the short fellow and I began a conversation.

  "Permit me to introduce myself."

  That day I decided to call myself Monsieur (the day was still two months away when all in France were commanded to claim no title but that of Citizen) Corday. That name had not yet become infamous in republican circles, nor famous among monarchists; young Charlotte, who bore it, was not to murder the Revolutionary enthusiast Marat for almost another year.

  —but I digress.

  "Napoleon Bonaparte, major of artillery," my new acquaintance replied briskly, acknowledging my apparent worthiness with a small bow.

  I responded with a similar gesture. "I assume, major, that those Swiss fellows being slaughtered across the street are not—? But no, forgive me, of course they could not possibly be under your command." I thought that a deep fire indeed had suddenly kindled in his eyes, when he perceived what I was on the verge of suggesting: that any soldiers for whom he was responsible might find themselves so outnumbered and disorganized in the face of the enemy.

  This forceful little Major Bonaparte spoke some Italian, but generally conversed in French, accented by his native Corsican dialect.

  Once we had opened a conversation, he seemed glad to have an audience for his professional military grumbling about how the Swiss, given proper leadership, ought to have won.

  Continuing a desultory conversation with the fellow, I heard him speaking his French and Italian with traces of an uncouth Corsican accent (which at the time I was unable to identify as such), traces that grew stronger when the man became excited, as he certainly did on the night when we first met. His physical stature was unimpressive, though his poise and energy made him seem bigger than he was.

  He told me, with an absolute conviction, just how effective a dozen cannon would have been—no, even as few as four or five—only a few hours earlier, in repelling the mob's assault upon the palace and its grounds. He spoke as one assuming an inarguable right to hold a professional opinion in the matter. I soon discovered that my new acquaintance had been in recent months an officer at the front, defending a confused and beleaguered France against an Austrian incursion. Anyone who might doubt my veracity regarding this encounter is advised to consult the history books, which now and then do get things right. It's well documented that Major Bonaparte watched the August 10, 1792, massacre at the palace of the Tuileries from a safe spot—but our spot was not all that safe, nor did he ever stand, as is sometimes claimed, in a shop window.

  I can testify—if anyone in my readers' century has lingering doubts—that Napoleon Bonaparte had a very convincing way about him; before I had been with the man five minutes, I was wishing that I had been able to employ him as a general in my old, breathing days, when the command of armies had been one of my chief concerns. Then, as he talked on, my own viewpoint gradually shifted; in another five minutes I was wishing that I could have served in some army under his command.

  He told me that he had been in Paris since May, chafing at the delays of the new bureaucracy (at least as capriciously stupid as the old) while being considered by the National Assembly for one post or another, and I believe he mentioned that he was staying at the Hotel de Cherbourg.

  Still, my senses were by far the keener, and suddenly I raised my head. "But it appears that the action is moving on." The bulk of the distant mob was again in motion, fitful and mindless, like a swarm of bees, leaving a litter of mangled bodies in its wake. "Are we to follow?"

  He surveyed the scene, hands clasped behind his back, then nodded decisively. "There may be something of value to be learned. If you will follow me, M'sieu Corday?"

  Chapter Nine

  My new companion had a way of putting questions that made them more compelling than direct orders from any ordinary man.

  And I had no reason to decline the invitation. Stubbornly I remained determined not to leave the vicinity of the palace as long as the instinctive feeling persisted that my brother was somewhere nearby. So much spilled blood would have drawn him almost irresistibly, I thought, were he anywhere within miles of the scene. I felt sure Radu was somehow involved in the slaughter going on across the street. Or, if not actually on the scene as yet, he was likely to show up at any moment. I resolved to stay, even if this meant having to risk some sharp discomfort from the sun. If necessary I could get through the remainder of the bright day with the help of my hat and the garden's numerous trees, a great many of which were still sufficiently intact to offer shade.

  They were no longer as numerous as they had been, many having been hacked down to satisfy the general appetite for destruction. The gunfire had been desultory for some time, and eventually died away altogether. But the scr
eams of bloodlust and of terror continued sporadically, hour after hour for the rest of the day and even, with lesser frequency, into the night. The Swiss Guards had quickly ceased to exist as a fighting force, and now, for the short balance of their miserable lives, found themselves ideally situated to play the role of victims, scapegoats for several hundred years of oppression in a country few of them had even seen until six months ago.

  At this point I believed it possible that the king and queen of France remained in the palace and were hiding with their two children somewhere within that labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Most of the people in Paris still thought so, and earlier in the day most people had been right. But later, by the time I arrived on the scene, the royal family, opting for a kind of protective custody that almost amounted to arrest, had gone to join the Assembly.

  As we began to follow the mob, I asked Bonaparte if the royal family were still in residence, and he declared decisively, on what basis I never learned, that they were not.

  When I inquired of him, tentatively, if he was a monarchist, he smiled and remarked: "France is less suited for democracy than a good many other countries."

  And once Bonaparte felt sure that I was something of an unreconstructed monarchist myself, or at least no agent of the new regime, he related the story of the day's earlier events, as he had been able to piece it together.

  In the early morning of that same day, King Louis had felt sufficiently confident in the loyalty of his troops to call them out into the heavily fortified courtyard of the palace for a review. The Swiss Guards cheered him boldly, but the Parisian National Guard, present in greater numbers, were in a sullen mood. Now and then a cry of "Vive la Nation" rose from their ranks.

  Only a few hours later, serious fighting had broken out.