A Sharpness on the Neck d-9

by Fred Saberhagen

  What terror and loathing she had experienced the first time, and on several occasions since…

  Marie reminisced about the king's and queen's heads, what their faces had looked like when she had worked on them. What the technician's thoughts had been.

  "Citoyen Louis and Citoyenne Marie, both at peace at last."

  She explained that by looking closely at one of the molds, you could tell whether it was taken from a living face or a dead one, because those taken from the dead have no breathing-tube holes at the nostrils.

  Radcliffe silently wondered why any of the Revolutionary authorities would want his wax effigy.

  She told Radcliffe also that eventually his image would probably go on display at Curtius's museum, and reminded him of where the museum was. He grunted an acknowledgment, deep in his unmoving throat.

  As soon as the figure in the corridor had moved away, and there was no guard or other attendant standing by to overhear, Marie passed on to Philip, in secrecy, a further message of encouragement and hope from Melanie, who sent word that she loved him.

  Philip groaned.

  Marie lowered her voice, but spoke with an intensity of feeling. "You are not to abandon hope, M'sieu Radcliffe."

  Someone else has told me that. The quick-drying plaster of Paris on his face kept him from saying the words aloud.

  "You may believe it," Marie added. A pause. "When I am gone, yet another will come to help you. Now hold still, move not a single muscle. The mold will soon be dry."

  Indeed, Marie was hardly gone, with her precious plaster cast packed in her hatbox, and the sun had hardly set, when there came a faint sound from the other end of the L-shaped cell, and—miracle of miracles!—a young woman appeared, wearing earrings of gypsy silver, peering with pretended shyness around the corner at him.

  "The gypsy fortune-teller!" Radcliffe breathed.

  She was dressed in a tattered costume suggesting gypsies, and in oddly accented French introduced herself as Constantia.

  The L-shaped cell had an old ventilation shaft at the far end. Seemingly too small for anyone to pass through it; and yet…

  Leaving his visitor behind him for the moment, Radcliffe went rummaging around in the angle of the cell where she seemed to have materialized. "There must be a loose stone somewhere. Or one of these window bars…"

  But then he looked more closely at the smiling woman, and partial understanding came.

  "Ah, perhaps I see. Or I begin to see. You, and Legrand…"

  "Yes indeed, how clever you are!" Constantia clapped her hands, like a child. "He and I are friends, and M'sieu Legrand has asked me to look in on you."

  Radcliffe was soon convinced that this woman was sincerely trying to help him.

  "M'sieu Legrand also said that you might like some brandy." And with a conjurer's gesture, Connie produced a little flask.

  Neither Legrand nor Marie had come back to see Radcliffe. The otherwise abandoned prisoner soon came to depend heavily on the comfort and hope offered by Constantia, who, once having introduced herself, stayed close to him as much as possible.

  Connie could tell stories very amusingly when she made the effort, and Radcliffe was distracted and entertained by her tales of how she periodically adopted the role of the gypsy fortune-teller, and as such passed unchallenged among the other entertainers performing at the morbid parties.

  Very early on in their acquaintance, Philip's new friend began to discuss with him the subject of vampires: their cravings, their powers, and even to some extent their weaknesses.

  And their first meeting was not over before she had kissed him, putting a severe strain on what feelings of loyalty he had begun to develop with regard to Melanie.

  From then on, whenever he was alone in his cell, which was very nearly all the time, Radcliffe kept expecting at every moment that the mysterious gypsy girl would join him. And frequently she did appear.

  Her words of encouragement were along the same lines as Legrand's. "It will be possible for you to laugh at locks and bars and walls of stone, even as I do—even as the Chevalier Legrand. Possible to leave these walls behind you forever, and your jailers too."

  "How can such a thing be possible?"

  She began the incredible, truthful explanation, gradually filling in details. And when the young man did not at first believe the vampire story, she conducted another convincing demonstration: vanishing before his eyes, then reappearing in the corridor outside the cell, beyond its locked and bolted door. Then in another instant she was back inside with him.

  "What is the secret?"

  She laughed, a small musical tinkle. "Love is the great secret of life. It solves all problems—and laughs at locksmiths, hadn't you heard?"

  "Love?" They were very close together now, sitting side by side on the narrow bunk, and he had become enthralled.

  "It is at the beginning of everything, is it not, my tall American? Do you know what it is to love—?"

  "I have loved. I do love."

  "But you did not let me finish. Do you know what it is to love, in the way of the nosferatu? What you will call in English, vampire."

  The prison around them was very dark, and howled its fear and madness in a hundred different voices, mostly very faint. Radcliffe whispered: "I have heard… only stories. Stories told by old women, to frighten their grandchildren."

  "Stories, pah, they are nothing. Real life is everything." And Constantia, beginning by stroking his cheek with the seductive skill gained in three centuries of experience, conducted another demonstration, this one even more overwhelmingly convincing than the other.

  "Philip, give me a kiss."[]

  "Bah, how can I show you, how can I do anything for you, if you will not do even that much when I ask it? Am I so ugly, then? You gave me a peck on the cheek before. But now I want a real kiss…"

  Later, what seemed to Radcliffe hours later though it was only a matter of minutes, he asked: "How long have you known Legrand?"

  "Ah, forever and a day! He calls me his 'little gypsy.' But there is no need for you to be jealous. For a long, long time now, for centuries in fact, we have been like brother and sister, because that is all that two of the nosferatu can ever be to each other."

  "Oh?"

  "Besides, he is very old…"

  "Oh?"

  "Yes. Let me tell you some of the facts of life…"

  * * *

  Ah, my dear little gypsy! Constantia though not very large was physically strong, and had been so even in her breathing days. In fact she was very nearly as old as my brother and I. Brave, ready to deal with the undead, those she called the moroi, for the sake of the magical power the body of such a one could confer—but she had never been known for her logic. The combination tended to make her an interesting ally; but I had no time to try to recruit anyone steadier.

  The next time Connie came to visit our poor client, she brought with her another gift of brandy, this time a whole bottle instead of merely a little flask.

  Philip grabbed it eagerly. Having momentary trouble with the cork, he was about to break off the bottle's neck in his impatience, but Connie intervened, using her long nails and remarkable strength of wrist to pull the cork out neatly.

  When he put the bottle down to gasp for breath, she said: "Ah, Philip! Why should not the two of us seize a little happiness, in these last days of our lives?"

  Connie's technique of lovemaking, which was certainly unique in Radcliffe's experience, confirmed her nature as something much different from an ordinary human.

  Philip talked nervously to the new object of his passion. Sometimes he babbled. "Did I tell you I did much of my growing up on an island in the Caribbean? My mother is still there. On Martinique, it is much easier to believe in such things than it is in Boston or Philadelphia."

  "I have heard the same thing from others. Someday, I think, I would like to see that part of the world."

  There were moments when he knew strong guilt feelings for his behavior with the gypsy, w
hen he saw it as a betrayal of Melanie. But as yet he and Melanie had made each other no formal pledge. There were times when she seemed very far away, a relic of his childhood—and other moments when all thoughts of her were wiped from his mind by a passion whose strength seemed born of the imminence of death.

  Connie on her successive visits provided Philip with a steady supply of strong drink. I believe that wine, brandy, and rum all appeared at different times. I had suggested a drop or two, to ease our client's anxiety, but in view of the result it seems plain that she overdid it.

  Later, she admitted to me that she had added a few drops of some little-known aphrodisiacal drug. The Borgia pharmacy had not yet exhausted all its treasures, Constantia, among her other achievements in our cause, succeeded brilliantly in her inspired plan of converting Radcliffe's cell into a genuine habitation, thereby granting immunity from vampire penetration except by the will of the occupant.

  She knew she had succeeded when she discovered one day that she herself was unable to enter without asking permission of the inmate. Then, laughing and clapping her hands, she explained to Radcliffe what a good sign this was.

  After Philip and Connie in the course of their lovemaking had exchanged a modest volume of blood, she told her handsome American explicitly that he was now liable to conversion. "If that should happen, you will have nothing to fear from Citizen Sanson."

  "What do you mean?"

  Choosing a time when there was no one in the corridor who might look in, Connie demonstrated on her own nude body how impossible it was for a metal-edged weapon to do one of the nosferatu lasting harm. She forced the sharp knife through her finger, through her hand, then in places that might have been expected to be more tender. She giggled and enjoyed her pupil's mixed reaction to the sight. Then she showed Radcliffe her skin undamaged.

  Or almost. There remained on that smooth brown surface a single drop of blood, which she persuaded him to lick away. A tingle of joy again, of pleasure that at the moment seemed worth dying for…

  "I say that if you become as I am, no prison will be able to keep you in… and no metal blade will ever kill you. That would not be so bad, no?"

  "Is it possible?" The words came out in a hoarse gasp.

  She made an eloquent gesture. "If a king and queen can have their heads chopped off by gutter rats—then who is to say what is impossible?"

  "You are saying that I would become like you and Legrand—and like the one who wants to kill me. Able to pass in and out of closed doors, and—and if I understand what you are saying—even able to withstand the great knife of Sanson's engine?"

  "It would pass through your neck without killing you. Precisely, my friend. You would be in two pieces, no doubt, but you could be put back together."

  "Two pieces."

  "That is what I said. Head here, body there. Then, zut!—back together, good as new again."

  He sat for a while on his bed in silence, trying to put it all together. Trying to make sense. "Why do you do this?"

  "What?"

  "Visit me, and give me back the chance to live."

  "That is easy. I am Vlad's friend, and I want to help him save your life."

  "Vlad?

  "I'm sorry. I mean the man you call Legrand, my dear."

  "I am not surprised to hear that he has other names. But… there is so much about all this I still don't understand. Two pieces, and back together?"

  "Poof, why do you worry? What have you to lose, in your situation? You don't have to understand everything, just this: The man you call Legrand considers that his honor binds him to you in loyalty, simply because you saved his life when he was in most dire need. Believe me, he is not one to forget either good deeds done to him or bad." Constantia paused for a sigh. "The only problem is—"

  "Yes?"

  The lady looked wistful. "In earning the loyalty of Legrand, you have earned the hatred of his brother, who is almost as powerful."

  "Yes, I have heard. The man who is supposed to want to drink my blood." He paused, rocking back and forth on his narrow prison cot, trying to get a grip on the short hair of his scalp, which was still bandaged, so he could pull it. "Which is what you do to me. And now you have me craving to taste your blood also. I think perhaps that I am going mad!"

  His companion tilted her curly head on one side and considered him carefully; "No," she decided. "No, you are still a long way from madness. I know many people who are truly insane, and they are nothing like you." She paused, considering. "Well, not very much."

  Spinning round, Radcliffe confronted her fiercely. "I tell you that I love Melanie!" And in that moment, when his passion for Connie had been momentarily satisfied, he experienced a burst of repentance, even of revulsion, for what he had just done.

  Constantia smiled benevolently. "But I am not jealous of what you feel for your Melanie. Is that what worries you? I am simply enjoying a good time with you."

  "What worries me is that—if what you tell me about you nosferatu is true—then, when I am changed—what will happen to her?" Philip in his desperation took another drink from the brandy bottle that was not yet emptied. "She is so fine, so pure—" Now tears were running down his cheeks. "Ah, I am not worthy of her!"

  Connie tried to explain. But he was drinking—brandy, not blood—and not listening. And she has never been very good at explanations.

  Philip's violent affair with Connie, indeed his whole acquaintance with her, lasted no more than a few days, but those few days were sufficient for our purpose. In them he lost track of time. More than enough happened, between him and Constantia, to teach Philip many things about the nature of vampires, and to afford him a real chance of becoming one.

  Meanwhile Melanie was lying low, doing what she thought she could do to protect her son. She had no idea that Philip was being seduced in prison, or even that there were such creatures as vampires—except that she was ready to concede that Citizen Legrand, who had pledged his help, was no ordinary man, and in fact could do some quite extraordinary things.

  Shortly after Marie had visited Radcliffe in his cell, Melanie at the museum received from the older woman a matter-of-fact report about the event. Melanie was able to take some comfort from it.

  But the great question still tormented her. "Can we really succeed in saving him?" she demanded of her cousin. "Can there be a rescue, from that prison?"

  "Why not? It is only a place, like other places. And Legrand has a scheme." Marie, whose eyes had seen a great many things in the last few years, nodded slowly. "I think I trust Legrand… whoever he really is."

  "Yes, I know. He is an impressive man. But the situation still terrifies me."

  Marie patted her sympathetically. "Let us each do our part. Then, it is in the hands of the good God."

  The fate of the man she loved was not Melanie's only worry. She wondered also whether her young child, little Auguste, was ever going to bear a name other than that of a bastard. More urgently than that, she wondered whether she herself might be arrested on some charge and never see her son again.

  Radu, knowing that patience and caution were essential in a conflict with his brother, made no real attempt to get at Radcliffe in his cell. He approached no closer than was necessary to sense the habitation effect which guarded the occupant.

  Something of the same caution kept him from trying to approach Melanie, whom he might otherwise have attacked just to get at Vlad even more indirectly.

  And then, as almost unexpected as such days often are, came the morning when the stolid workmen came for Philip Radcliffe, without fuss or fanfare, just before dawn, and Connie had to fade into the stone walls and darkness to get out of the way.

  Radcliffe was once more well-fortified with strong drink, a condition that had become chronic over the last few days; and he had been affected also by Connie's careless brush with converting him to vampirism. He could only stare around him stupidly. Where was she? But it was sheer fantasy to believe that they had done the things together that he reme
mbered. It seemed to him that he remembered drinking blood from her veins; that she had tasted his was indelibly imprinted.

  In the harsh glare of outdoor daylight, dazzling after days in his dim cell, it seemed to him that he had only dreamed the presence of the gypsy girl.

  By the time Philip Radcliffe was hustled out of the prison into the light of day, he had more or less reconciled himself to his fate, whatever it was going to be—to everything, in fact, but the idea that he would never see Melanie again. Philip had no convincing reason to doubt that he was going to be guillotined. His knees felt weak as he was pushed, stumbling, this way and that.

  The people who had come to load the tumbrils for the day were cursing and fretting over their lists. "Where is the Englishman, Percy Blakeney? Name of a dog, but he is not here!"

  "But here is at least one of the foreigners, who will not escape us!"

  The combined effects of seduction, alcohol, and anxiety on Radcliffe rendered him semiconscious before his trip to the scaffold actually got started.

  The streets of Paris, and their jeering crowds, went by him as in a dream. Constantia had vanished, as dream-creatures were compelled to do in sunlight.

  A wave of despair washed over him. Madness, all madness, and he had betrayed his true love, Melanie, for the embrace of a satanic enchantress. Three weeks and I will be in London… and he had allowed himself to be convinced. What hollow nonsense, before the reality of the tall cart, and his bound wrists!

  He saw now, with unbearable clarity, that Constantia's pledges were fantasies, were lies, and he, Philip Radcliffe, had thrown away his life, clinging to a hope that could be no more than sheer insanity…

  Radcliffe, mind spinning with the aftermath of brandy and exhaustion, jammed in among the sweating, trembling bodies of the other scheduled victims of the day, rode the jolting tumbril through the streets, with his hands already tied behind him, and his shirt torn open at the collar, and arrived at the Place de la Revolution to play his part in the great show.