A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  He looked at me doubtfully—an enigmatic, dark-haired child with a pinched and gnome-like face, who as I later learned was not allowed to go to the cemetery with his mother, but spent most of his time at the museum engaged in building a toy guillotine out of some scraps of wood and a few bits of hardware.

  I made my tone more businesslike. "Is your mother here, my lad?"

  "I will see, citizen," the boy answered, politely enough, and got to his feet. "Who shall I say is looking for her?"

  "Tell her her most recent patient is now quite restored to health; but even so, he wishes a consultation… never mind, tell her: Citizen Legrand."

  Auguste gave me a strange look at that, then put aside his toy guillotine and arose to go and look for his mother.

  As soon as he was gone, I picked up the toy and examined it. Ingenious, though not technically sophisticated. When the trigger was pulled, a brick fell on the poised blade, adapted from a broken pocketknife, giving it impetus enough to slice the neck of a tiny animal clean through. Maybe, I thought, a powerful spring would work better than a heavy weight, but such hardware would not be commonly available to children.

  My brother, I thought, would be delighted to see this.

  * * *

  I waited patiently, and little Augusts was back in a minute or two. "Citizen, they tell me that her work has taken her to the cemetery this evening."

  "Thank you, my lad—I know which one."

  In the cemetery, many of the circumstances of our first meeting two years ago were now repeated, with minor variations. The trench, and the burial mound that marked where the trench had been, had moved on for a considerable serpentine distance. Again Melanie and her cousin Marie were at the raw end of this mound, where the latest burials were to be found. And they were hard at work, but now equipped with a smaller, better focused version of the Argand lamp.

  When I came upon them, Melanie was absorbed in the grisly task of looking for one particular head, while Marie held another in her lap, painstakingly coating the features with wet plaster. Now that I understood the point of the work, it seemed almost commonplace. The actual pouring of the wax, and the many remaining steps in creating the replica which was the object of all this labor, would of course take place back at Curtius's workshop, behind the museum.

  Tonight the rats seemed bigger and bolder, more willing to interfere, than they had been on the occasion of my last visit.

  The women took turns in interrupting their work, to try to drive away the annoying and dangerous rats by throwing pebbles. But mostly the beasts—arrogantly well-fed, confident clients of the Revolutionary state—ignored the ineffective bombardment and continued to pursue their own agenda.

  With a slight bow and a polite murmur, I did the ladies a favor, or at least saved them some time, by driving off a whole swarm of the rodents with a great silent shout.

  "I think they will not bother you for a while."

  In response the two women gave me a strange look.

  I wondered, aloud, if they ever had trouble finding the head they had been sent to model, and decide to use a substitute instead? They could at least hope that no one would be able to tell the difference. If so, they would not confess the dereliction to me now, but only laughed at the idea.

  To Melanie I said: "Your son told me where I could find you."

  She paused in her work, and looked vaguely alarmed.

  I hastened to be reassuring. "Pray do not be concerned; he was quite safe when I saw him, at the museum. He seemed a charming lad."

  "Thank you, m'sieu."

  "Who is his father? Excuse me, you may be sure that I do not ask such a question out of idle curiosity."

  "Then why do you ask it, sir?" Marie Grosholtz demanded.

  Melanie shot her cousin an anguished look. "Oh, what does it matter now? The gentleman is a friend of Philip's, and has his reasons, I am sure."

  While Marie, who had known about her cousin's troubles for ten years and more, looked on sympathetically, Melanie told me the story of how she had given birth to this child about ten years ago, a few months after the kindly (in this instance, anyway) Dr. Curtius, at the urging of his niece Marie, had taken in a pregnant fourteen-year-old, and set her to work at easy tasks in his establishment.

  The father of Melanie's baby was, or rather had been, a careless aristocratic youth named Charles Dupin, the scion of a well-to-do family, who at first had declined to acknowledge his paternity of the child. Later, she thought, he might have been inclined to do so, but before he had taken any definite steps in that direction he had allied himself with the wrong political faction and been beheaded.

  "I had thought it possible," I observed, "that young Auguste's father was Philip Radcliffe."

  "No." Her fists clenched, and she stared at me. "Oh God, do you bring me any news of Philip?"

  I shook my head and gestured soothingly. "All I know with certainty is that he has been arrested. I was hoping you could tell me in what prison he can be found."

  "He is in La Conciergerie. We have been able to find out that much."

  "Ah. That gives me a place to start. He is a foreigner, and I think that will give us a few days' grace at least, before they turn him over to Sanson."

  Meanwhile, Marie worked on steadily, wiping dried blood and bits of bran from her subject's face. The baskets on Sanson's platform usually contained four or five inches of either bran or sawdust, intended to absorb blood. Having cleaned her subject as well as was practical, she then smeared it with a mixture of Linseed oil and lead oxide, in preparation for the plaster of Paris, which when dry would make the mold.

  With the rats held in abeyance for the time being, the three of us were soon chatting with something like a natural freedom. When I asked the two women why they had chosen this spot to do this work, they were ready with a simple explanation. If an impression of the face was made at graveside, there was no need to carry the head away. It could be tossed back into the pit.

  The young women explained to me that if they did not make the molds at the cemetery, then, after finding the heads they wanted, it would be necessary for them to change their clothes, or put on clean garments over the bloodstained ones, and wrap the heads somehow or put them away in hatboxes. There would be nothing particularly conspicuous about the pair of women as, riding in a wagon or light carriage, they carried their finds back to the wax museum in the Boulevard du Temple.

  But then, when they were through with the heads, they would be faced with the messy problem of getting rid of them.

  "We might be able to bury one or two in our backyard, and no one the wiser. But with the numbers that we must handle… already there have been dozens, and there is no end in sight to what the Committee wants…"

  As we conversed, Melanie had gone on crouching, digging, peering, up to her knees in muddy earth and decaying humanity, enduring the pervasive smell while going about her ghastly but (as I now realized) relatively innocent business. Meanwhile Marie, the more skillful modeler, went on using oil and plaster of Paris to make a mold in which the dummy head of the night's first subject would later be cast in hot wax.

  Then the younger woman gave a little cry of triumph. "Ah, here he is!"

  Melanie had found the head she had been looking for. There had been twenty-eight executed in the previous day's batch, and the search had not been particularly easy.

  "But I think I recognize that face," I ejaculated suddenly. "Is it not Lavoisier?"

  Yes, even I had heard of Lavoisier, the man who now, two hundred years later, is called the father of chemistry, and even I was shocked. Why should the artistic authorities, or the political, have wanted to execute a man of science and then immortalize their crime in wax? Of course the two fields of endeavor were still nowhere near as sharply demarcated as they have recently become.

  It was Lavoisier who proposed the name "oxygen" for the dephlogisticated air required to support a fire. He had worked diligently for the Revolution in its early stages, perfecting its gunp
owder and its cannon. But he had been overtaken by a period in his past when he had served as a kind of tax-collector for the old regime, and yesterday had received his reward.

  Marie observed: "Someone pointed out his name on the list to Robespierre, and our leader said: 'The Revolution has no need of scientists.' "

  And that, I thought, should have been chiseled on his tombstone.

  I felt that Melanie deserved some reward for the assistance she had earlier given me, or attempted to give me, through her medical efforts. It was no fault of hers that those efforts were misguided. But I was not as greatly and as formally in her debt as I was in Radcliffe's.

  "I understand now, Mademoiselle, the purpose of your work, and I find nothing discreditable about it. I regret having suggested—what I did suggest. My sincere apologies." I made a slight bow, including Marie, who nodded in return.

  "Your apology is accepted, Citizen Legrand—and what of M'sieu Radcliffe? Is there… is there…"

  "Is there any hope? I think so. You have told me where he is. Now we shall see what we can do."

  "You mean…?"

  "I mean to help him. As to how, that has yet to be decided."

  The prison called La Conciergerie, like most of the others in the city, was busy day and night during the climactic summer of the Terror. I think that not a single cell stood empty for more than an hour or two. The population fluctuated less than you might think, given the high turnover. On average the count stood at about three hundred souls, during the peak years of '93 and '94. The place stank, of course, of fear and sweat and unwashed bodies, though not as badly as most of the prisons of that epoch. An extra excitement seemed to vibrate in the air. I gathered that if one had to be in prison, this was definitely the place.

  Conducting a preliminary reconnaissance on a rainy afternoon, I walked around the prison section of the Palace, or rather I covered three sides of it by this method, looking over the vast gray building from the outside.

  I also made a flying trip, by night. Both methods of scouting had their advantages.

  This prison formed part of the Palais de Justice, which stood on the same island in the Seine as Notre Dame, and at one time or another during the Terror its cells accommodated very many of the most famous victims, including Hebert, Corday, Robespierre, Marie Antoinette, and Danton—besides Charles Darnay, who later achieved a certain literary fame, and a few other foreigners.

  Victims were brought in at all hours, while others were hauled away to attend their trials, most of the latter soon returning under sentence of death. Of the many who were taken from their cells never to return, all but a very few went to their executions. Also coming and going constantly were police and lawyers, along with members of the new hierarchy of bureaucrats, including some of the many priests who had sworn allegiance to the Revolution. As at any other institution where numbers of people dwelt, tradesmen came and went, food and other necessities were delivered.

  I soon learned, somewhat to my surprise, that there seldom passed an evening in this house of horrors when at least one feast was not in progress. These banquets and parties were always rude and raucous but sometimes elaborate and expensive, hosted by one or more of those who were to lose their heads on the next day. Often these affairs were amazingly lavish. As a rule the guards and other officials, following a tradition established during the Old Regime, could easily be persuaded to go along with this practice, while maintaining the essentials of tight security. People who had experienced both prisons said that this one had a conviviality lacking in even the most luxurious quarters of the Bastille.

  On occasion La Conciergerie even welcomed the efforts of musicians and other entertainers, hired by the more prosperous of the condemned at their own expense, to brighten the last days and hours of their impoverished comrades as well as their own. I wondered what success a fortune teller might enjoy. Dedicated atheists, of whom there were many among the Revolutionary theorists, would frown at the practice, and I supposed that for many other prisoners the idea would be too much to take.

  Still, it occurred to me that this might be a good role for Constantia to play.

  A gypsy singer and dancer might easily double as a fortune teller. Vague possibilities stirred, as is usual when I am making plans. She might specialize in telling happy fortunes for the prisoners' loved ones elsewhere.

  I supposed I could, myself, appear as a gypsy musician. Sawing at a violin, or strumming a guitar. But there was not much time for elaborate schemes.

  Radcliffe, like other prisoners, was at certain times allowed out of his cell to take part in at least some of these parties. It proved childishly easy to arrange for him to meet Constantia at one of them.

  When it came Radcliffe's turn to hold out his hand to the fortune teller, she had solid information to convey to the prisoner. "I see a long life ahead of you, young master."

  " 'Citizen,' " he corrected absently. He had never met Connie before, and had no idea that she knew his acquaintance M'sieu Legrand, or was anything more than the gypsy entertainer she appeared to be. And Melanie Remain was much in his thoughts.

  But all the same, the gypsy wench was still impressively attractive. And what she told him proved to be of considerable interest too.

  Through most of his life he had had nothing but contempt for superstition. But lately things had been very weird.

  Well. Security was of course not as absolute as those in authority needed to believe. Three hundred years of experience had taught me that it never is; and nothing in the additional two hundred since then has caused me to believe otherwise.

  A few prisoners were kept continuously confined in their cells. The late Marie Antoinette's cell (doubtless fancier than most) was a dark, almost unventilated chamber some twelve feet square, with an uneven brick floor, a narrow cot and a straw mattress, a few chairs and an old table. Wallpaper had been applied to wooden frames against the walls, but it was peeling off with the damp.

  Meanwhile, as became clear later, my dear brother Radu was also attempting, rather cautiously, to keep some kind of watch on the prison. Mostly he tried to accomplish this through various breathing agents, despite the fact that they were so undependable. My younger brother at this point was chiefly concerned with staying out of my sight; he continually, and with some justice, suspected me of trying to set an ambush for him.

  Radu's contacts with the authorities, direct or indirect, made it possible for him to know in just which cell any prisoner was supposedly being confined.

  I needed no more than twenty-four hours to acquaint myself thoroughly with the details of the prison's physical construction, and of its daily routine. The latter tended to be irregular, a condition which has advantages as well as disadvantages for anyone who might be planning an escape.

  Wanting to achieve Radcliffe's rescue as quickly as possible, and realizing that I had no time to waste, I swiftly worked out several possible plans of escape. I wanted to have a number from which to choose, in case whichever scheme I first selected should prove to have some insuperable flaw.

  Bribery, that ancient and time-honored method of achieving almost anything in the scope of human activity, deserved to be considered first. But in this case there were reasons why I preferred not to rely on it.

  My simplest and most direct means of locating within the prison certain men and women whom I could recognize would of course be to ghost in through one of the barred windows at any time between sunset and dawn, and take an inventory of its inmates, cell by cell. The place was crowded with wretched humble folk, along with a few who last year, or yesterday, had been among the leaders of society. Once on an earlier visit, many months ago, out of sheer curiosity, I had looked in unseen on Marie Antoinette.

  Probably it is completely unnecessary for me to point out, to readers who have spent their entire lives in the second half of the twentieth century, that the vast majority of the victims of the Terror had never had any idea of committing the crime for which they died, never conspired in some
way against the new republican government. Most were guilty of the Kafkaesque crime of being Suspect, and that is all. One could with perfect ease lose liberty and even life as the result of a chance remark, an anonymous denunciation by an enemy, or by simply coming under the eye of some police agent who was seeking to fill a quota—you who read will understand such matters, from your vantage point near the beginning of the third millennium, more readily than did I at the end of the eighteenth century.

  Having located my benefactor and formed at least a preliminary plan, it seemed only reasonable to pay him a visit and offer him hope. Whatever method of release I finally decided on, his cooperation would be required.

  I thought a prison cell would rarely if ever qualify as a legitimate habitation, in the strange calculus of possibilities that limit the comings and goings of the nosferatu. At least I had at that time never yet found one that I was barred from entering, be it occupied or not.

  Radcliffe's cell was somewhat smaller than Marie Antoinette's, and of an unusual L-shape, with barely room for a small table and chair beside his bed. I came in quietly. He started up from his mattress, where he had been lying with hands clasped behind his head, and almost cried out at the sight of my shadowy figure, standing not much more than an arm's length away from him, my finger raised to my lips enjoining silence.

  Chapter Twenty

  For a long moment the young American stared at me as if he thought I was the Angel of Death, whilst I stood waiting, wondering if I ought to have made a less dramatic entrance. But eventually recognition dawned in Radcliffe's eyes—and when it came, it brought with it a new astonishment.

  "I did not hear you come in, M'sieu Legrand." In his surprise the young man spoke in English, but I answered him in French, my own English at that time being no more than rudimentary.

  I smiled modestly. "I was rather unobtrusive about it."

  "But I didn't see the door open either!" Leaping up from his pallet, shaking his head in growing bewilderment, he pushed past me to the door, seized it by the bars which almost filled the small high opening, and pushed and pulled some more, meanwhile trying to peer out into an empty corridor. The massive wooden construction remained closed. "Still locked!" he cried, now having switched to his excellent French.