A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  Converting both Philip and Melanie to vampires would render their escape from prison impossible for the authorities to prevent; but it would also rob them both permanently of any possibility of bringing their mutual love to its natural conclusion. Again, that would represent a chance for my wayward brother to claim a kind of victory. And to deny him victory at every possible point, at almost any cost, had become my dearest goal.

  Constantia needed but little persuasion to get her to visit the male prisoner in his private cell—in fact, as I now realized, my old acquaintance was already only too eager to do so. Constantia, whom I had known almost all her life, was, to put it mildly, a little flighty, and wont to act with dangerous impulsiveness. But I anticipated no difficulty in persuading her to make the acquaintance of a handsome and hearty young man.

  I tried to talk over the range of possibilities with Constantia, before sending her to Radcliffe, to make sure my old associate understood precisely how I thought the matter should be handled; but, as the reader must have realized by now, it is sometimes difficult to hold a rational discussion with that dear girl.

  Part of her assigned task was to convey the essentials of an escape plan to him, but I should have known better than to trust her with any mission of that kind.

  It was my gypsy's own idea, and not a bad one I must admit, that she could talk to him more easily, and be more convincing, if she appeared in the guise of a fellow prisoner.

  If she were in a cell next to his and could squeeze her body through a narrow opening or ventilator, much too small for him to pass, she could be something of a bodyguard against Radu. And perhaps establish the habitation defense.

  Easy enough for a vampire to break open, by main force or other means, a prison gate or a cell door or window to allow some breathing convict to escape—but to get the escaped prisoner clean away in the midst of a fanatical manhunt would require at least moderate cleverness as well as force.

  Any vampire could easily overpower any prison guard, or several of them, then open the cell door with the key and march Radcliffe out as if on some Committee business. It was not impossible for a woman to appear as a prison guard. But the pair almost certainly would be stopped and questioned at several points before they made it out of the prison. I, playing the role of escort, could probably bluff and bluster my way through such obstacles, but success could not be guaranteed.

  And Radu might well show up, at the most inconvenient moment, to claim his prize.

  Alternatively, a dead body, dressed to look like that of the prisoner in question, could be left in the cell, making it look as if my client had committed suicide. Perhaps by means of poison? Or with a gun, even a blunderbuss, which might make positive identification very difficult. Hanging, strangulation might well discolor and distort the face sufficiently. How would any prisoner have been able to obtain a gun? Of course it was not impossible, but finding one with his brains blown out would certainly have provoked a great investigation. Quite probably at least one guard would lose his head.

  I thought I was on the right track with this idea, but did not yet see how to carry it far enough.

  Clothes, rings, and so on would tend to confirm the presumption of identity. Radcliffe now had a partially shaved and bandaged scalp, which would be handy later on.

  The body of someone freshly executed could be brought back a few hours later into the cell, but it would be hard to pass off decapitation as a suicide, no matter how dull-witted the investigators.

  Any dead body found in the cell and accepted as the prisoner's would of course be carried out and guillotined—suicide does not save one's neck from that fate, once the People have commanded it.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Radu, counting on my fanatical attitude (as he saw it) in any matter where I considered that my honor was involved, was sure that I was going to try to rescue Radcliffe from the supposedly escape-proof prison of La Conciergerie. And of course he was right.

  The obvious way for me to save my client from prison and the scaffold, and strengthen him against further attack, was to turn him into a vampire—and Radu, I was sure, would have no trouble deducing that that was my plan.

  I felt confident of being able to follow my brother's thoughts—even though I was not yet aware that Radu already had the cabinetmaker Duplay secretly preparing a wooden guillotine-blade. That fact I learned later, when it was too late to do anything about it.

  As I saw it, the main problem in rescuing Radcliffe lay in protecting him, indefinitely, against the evil machinations of Radu. In the course of nature, the young American might easily live another forty or fifty years. And if he were converted, Radu would be forced to abrogate his vow to drink the young man's blood—either that or poison himself. Radcliffe's blood would be safe from drinking, but the time in which I might be required to defend him from other forms of attack would very likely stretch out into centuries.

  Another reason to simply kill Radu. But no, my oath blocked me immovably from that course of action.

  Radu was ready to try any means by which he might succeed in catching Vlad in some kind of trap. Preferably fatal.

  And yet, when he really thought about it, he wasn't sure that he wanted to kill Vlad.

  He mused aloud: "No, I can be perfectly satisfied with less than that… no, rather, his mere death is not enough. I want more."

  The more Radu thought about the situation, the more it seemed to him that he would derive greater satisfaction from forcing Vlad to break a vow than he would from killing him. If only it were possible to torment him so that he would be driven to suicide… that would be a perfect consummation.

  But in his heart Radu knew that to be a futile dream. Even if he could somehow force Vlad to fail to keep a solemn vow. Neither brother was one to direct violence against himself.

  My little brother had also, through frequent visits, acquired a better knowledge of prisons than almost any breathing person in the world, even among those whose daily work lay in the fields of torture and incarceration. Both my brother and I were well aware that such establishments in general were anything but escape-proof, no matter how they might be advertised. Escape-proof prisons, like unassailable fortresses, exist only in theory. In the real world, such institutions are never any stronger than the weakest human in possession of a key. Bribery was far and away the most common means of getting out of one type of stronghold or into the other.

  But true fanatics were exceptionally prevalent among the guiding spirits of the Terror. Many of these revolutionaries qualified. Once a man or woman had fallen into their hands, bribery became much less dependable, and even dangerous. These sans-culotte jailers feared for their own heads, and spies were everywhere. Almost every official, high and low, was fearful of being charged with accepting the gold of Pitt, and being a part of the great ongoing conspiracy. There were a number of fanatics around who cared very little about money. A great many officials, fearing for their own necks, would refuse even to listen to business propositions, and even should they accept one they might think better of it and refuse to honestly stay bribed.

  Radu had his minions on watch, vigilantly trying to detect any attempt by Vlad at bribery of prison guards and officials. If any such plot were hatched, Radu intended to make sure that it was betrayed.

  Radu rubbed his bony hands together, enjoying the game immensely. He considered the possibility that he'd lose touch with Radcliffe, that Vlad could successfully get the young American out of prison and then spirit him away.

  But the more Radu considered that possibility, the less he was concerned. He was very confident that he would be able eventually to catch up with his victim again, no matter to what lengths Vlad went to protect him.

  It was at this time that Radu swore, or at least claimed to have sworn, his own great formal oath to drink Radcliffe's blood, and also to see that the American's head was cut off. How well he was able to keep it, we shall see. Oaths in themselves, of course, have never meant anything to that scoundrel; the o
nly real purpose of this one, I am sure, was to mock me and irritate me further. Therefore he had to be sure that I knew about it. I could hear him in my imagination, expostulating in mock horror: "Do you want me to break my solemn oath, my brother? Whatever would our beloved papa say to that?"

  Naturally any serious blood-drinking would have to be accomplished before Philip's execution.

  * * *

  Convincing the Terrorists that Radcliffe had been officially beheaded—with all the necessary paperwork in good order—meant that they would not be looking for him after his escape. He would still need forged papers, of course, but in a new identity.

  "Do you suppose he could pass as a Frenchman?"

  "I have little doubt of that."

  I was discussing these matters with Constantia—because at the moment I had no more rational conversational partner available.

  "Suppose that, once Radcliffe's been turned vampire, we were to let him be beheaded. No metal knife would be able to take his life; that has been already proven. Eventually—there need be no hurry—head and torso could be grafted back together. Long ago, as you may remember, I myself passed through much the same process; though my execution was not as clean as the one that Citizen Sanson will provide."

  "A bit hard on his sensibilities in the meantime, though, don't you think?" Constantia often felt genuine sympathy for attractive people. "I mean, he'll have to ride the tumbril, mount the scaffold, have his hands bound behind him, look through the little window—then I suppose he'll be able to hear the blade, sliding in its grooves, as it begins to fall—" She gave a pretty little gasp of horror.

  I studied her through narrowed eyes. "I understand your meaning perfectly, my dear. But I expect the real reason for your objection is that, once he is nosferatu, his blood will no longer be tasty in your mouth."

  I had meanwhile considered and rejected another possible method of releasing a prisoner by trickery: I myself as a last resort might play the role of Radcliffe, and allow myself to be guillotined.

  "Did you observe what happened in Darnay's cell the other day?" Constantia commented when I mentioned this. And she giggled at the thought.

  "No, I did not. Does it have the least relevance to our own difficulties?"

  "I don't know. Some stupid Englishman—Barton or Garton, some name like that—I suppose he was really tired of living—took the condemned prisoner's place—quite willingly!—without the guards catching on, and it seems they got away with it." She provided more details than I cared to hear. "Barton, or whatever his name was, said it was the best thing that he had ever done, or some such nonsense."

  I thought it over. "It has seemed to me for some time that most English are quite mad; I really must visit there someday."

  But the day for such a journey lay far in my future. At the moment, I had more urgent matters to think about. One trick could be to convince Radu that we were relying upon a stratagem similar to the one which had saved Darnay—ultimately, to convince my brother that Radcliffe, vampire or not, had had his head chopped off by a wooden knife, his blood perhaps already spoiled by death.

  "So it will seem to Radu," I brooded, "that neither he nor I have been able to fulfill our respective oaths."

  "I didn't know that you had sworn one."

  "He will assume I have. And whether I have or not, it is still an affair of honor. Unless Radu's oath is limited to forcing me to go back on mine…"

  Constantia, losing patience with what she called my Machiavellian habits of thought, flounced out, declaring she had more interesting things to do.

  I had considered yet another plan: I might carry in the dead body of a man who resembled Radcliffe, waving an impressive-looking written order, announcing the necessity of a certain prisoner's identifying this body.

  "And we cannot very well bring the prisoner out to do so," I would tell the guards. "Though if you would prefer that—?"

  Of course not.

  Then the dead body would be left in the cell, dressed in Radcliffe's clothes, and Radcliffe in the habiliments of the corpse would be carried out… but there were too many things that could go wrong.

  Suffice it to say that in the end there were many plans, and variations upon plans, but that necessity decreed that one be quickly chosen.

  I decided that it would probably not be wise to fully explain the finally chosen plan to the man it was designed to rescue. In the first place, the most crucial stages of my scheme, as it was finally formulated, did not require any active, intelligent cooperation on his part. In the second place, I doubted there would be time enough to explain convincingly; and in the third, I could not predict the young man's reaction if he did understand. There was a possibility that he would even refuse to cooperate with any design so daring and outrageous. Rather I preferred to have him fed on vague reassurances in which the hope of salvation was emphasized.

  With all these possibilities in my mind, my closing words of encouragement, on my last visit to Radcliffe's cell, were somewhat ambiguous.

  "Listen to me—do not despair. Even at the last moment, when it seems to you that no earthly power could possibly help you, it will not be too late. Even when you hear the knife begin to fall, repeat to yourself: In three weeks I can be in London."

  No doubt Radu had also heard of the Englishman Darnay's escape. My brother could be counted on to block our move, if we should try something along the same line. Similarly he foresaw that the prisoner might be converted to vampirism, and he had his countermeasure ready for that ploy as well: his plan to arrange with the executioner Sanson, or one of Sanson's helpers, to substitute a wooden blade for the metal one.

  * * *

  Radu, unlike his older brother, generally enjoyed playing games, verbal and otherwise, with people he soon expected to kill, or at least to terrorize. Vlad as a rule obtained no intrinsic satisfaction from terrorizing anyone; it was basically the concept that justice was being done that gave him pleasure. Nor did he enjoy conversing with those for whom he felt contempt.

  But Radu, irresistibly attracted by suffering and despair, which in a way drew him more strongly than mere blood, could hardly resist the temptation to sneak into the prison from time to time. He found the atmosphere there, of despair and fear and hatred, almost as much to his liking as the sight and feel of the sharp physical blade, redolent of raw blood.

  Radu would want to drink Radcliffe's blood before the execution, if he was ever going to do it at all. Doing so immediately after death, in broad daylight, would probably be impossible to accomplish, and later the effort would be futile and disgusting; in fact downright poisonous. Would he be satisfied to see the execution without drinking the blood? Evidently.

  Would he be able to distinguish Radcliffe's blood from that of some other man? Probably not.

  Constantia, doing a favor for her old friend Vlad, and having some fun at the same time, announced herself ready to make repeated visits to the prisoner Radcliffe. Maybe even one visit would be sufficient to achieve his conversion, if it was handled properly. He would have to drink deeply of the vampire's blood, as she did of his.

  No matter how strongly the breathing youth was devoted to someone else, Constantia considered that the task of seducing him lay well within her powers.

  Connie was visualizing the scene for Vlad: "And when his dead-looking body was discovered—then excitement! Turmoil, uproar! The prisoner has taken poison, committed suicide in his cell. Unusual but by no means unheard of."

  She began to argue for some form of the conversion scenario. "A little searching by Philip's friends among the day's fresh corpses in the cemetery, and his head and body could be found and reunited, with the result that he's as good as new."

  "Some might say better."

  "Should we try fitting his head on backwards? I wonder what would happen…"

  Vlad scowled. "My object is to repay a good turn, not to confect a monstrous joke."

  But maybe Radcliffe, on regaining his consciousness and understanding, wouldn't
look at it that way. If Constantia had, accidentally or playfully, fitted the young man's head on backwards, probably it would, in time, work itself around to the proper position through the natural malleability of the nosferatu physiology. Or could be put in place with a hearty wrench exerted with the strength of some friendly vampire. A temporary interruption of breathing would not matter in the least.

  Constantia and Vlad would no doubt feel insulted when their client, for whom they were doing so much, complained to them about having been converted, or protested that he did not want to be.

  Vlad might feel somewhat affronted, but at least he would not be surprised to discover such an attitude in a breather.

  Vlad to Constantia: "You have told him too much, and at the same time not enough."

  She sulked. "Maybe you should do it then. Or get someone else."

  "Come, come! No one can do such things any better than you, if you will only concentrate on the job at hand."

  Vlad and Constantia assured their worried client that a man once changed to a vampire could never be changed back.

  "That will not happen in this world."

  Radcliffe, gritting his teeth and about to undergo his fate, murmured some heartfelt prayers for the safety of his dear Melanie.

  Did he fear that he, as a vampire, would be condemned, compelled by his own nature, to do harm to the woman he loved?

  I considered one rescue plan after another, running each one through, in my imagination, to several possible conclusions. And then, when I felt that we were running out of time, I made my choice.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  There came a time, on what Phil Radcliffe calculated was either the third or fourth day of his and June's captivity—they were beginning to lose track—a time when Graves had been gone longer than usual.

  Philip had gotten nowhere in his attempts to guess or learn where the chief kidnapper went during these absences, or by what means of transportation. Vaguely the young man had the idea that Graves couldn't be going very far, for there were never any sights or sounds of vehicles departing or arriving. The small landing strip had remained unused since their arrival.