A Sharpness on the Neck d-9
Page 32
At last, smiling silently, Radu stepped out into the courtyard. The child, all alone and absorbed in his game, was raggedly dressed in approved Revolutionary fashion, and dirty with the neglect of these last few hectic days. No doubt Mama had been thinking of other things.
On bare feet the small boy crouched before his ingenious toy, rapt over his small institute of slaughter. On the executioner's left, an array of headless mice and birds were laid out on a plank. On his right, half a dozen other shivering small animals, still intact, awaited their turns.
Radu's thoughts were elsewhere than on the animals, and several seconds passed before he noticed that those arrayed on the right of the miniature scaffold were in no way confined or bound, but only mesmerized. Their small hearts hammered rapidly, their little lungs kept laboring, but their limbs that might have carried them to safety were quite immobile.
Several additional seconds went by before the significance of this fact struck him.
Someone, no doubt to make friends with the apprentice executioner, had mesmerized the animals.
The smile froze on Radu's face, even as the boy, unafraid, looked up to take note of the man's presence.
Radu knew what had happened, he understood what his own fate was to be, before he heard another sound.
There elapsed what seemed to Radu a very long time indeed, in which he tried without success to nerve himself to turn and look.
But he remained staring straight ahead. Because he knew, perfectly well, that whether he turned around or not was going to make no difference.
"I am glad to see you, my brother." Vlad's deep voice was unmistakable. It addressed itself to Radu in a language he understood very well, centuries older than the French of 1794. And it was very close behind him.
Radu's beautifully shaped lips twitched in a faint smile. Whatever was going to happen to him now, at least Philip Radcliffe was dead, and he had tasted Radcliffe's blood. By no punishment could his brother ever deprive him of that triumph.
Chapter Thirty-One
In 1996 Radu's head and body, separated by the latest technology of the end of the eighteenth century, quick-frozen by the most up-to-date equipment of the twentieth century, were shipped to a region of the world very distant from the American Southwest.
On the day Vlad Dracula said good-bye to the twentieth-century Radcliffes, he had something he wanted to show them. He had only borrowed it for a while, for this very purpose.
"So, that is what he looked like," the modern Philip Radcliffe said, when he had gazed for a little while at the object in his mentor's hands.
Vlad nodded. "Originally, of course, the appearance was much more natural. The models in the galleries can last for more than twenty years. Eventually, however, the wax becomes discolored, it dries and crumbles. And the hair wears out: of course it has to be periodically brushed, combed, and washed."
June looked away from the ancient model. Her eyes fell on the rubber masks, discarded days ago by Vlad's modern helpers, now lying in a row on a shelf like so many decapitated heads.
The thought occurred to Mrs. Radcliffe that on the day Vlad Dracula and Gabriel Sanson had worked their trickery on the platform of the guillotine, the two of them must have actually beheaded more than a dozen victims—the savior of her husband's ancestor must have played perfectly his role of assistant executioner.
She looked up to see him smiling benevolently at her, and knew a shudder of fear that he perhaps could read her thoughts.
Both Radcliffes in 1996 wanted to know more about what had happened to Philip's namesake and ancestor in the summer of 1794.
In that year I once more forced Radu into a trance, then beheaded him with the same guillotine he had planned to use on Radcliffe—with a spare metal blade carefully substituted for the wooden one.
I did not bother to tell the modern Radcliffes that it had amused me on that earlier occasion to have Radu's head modeled as a keepsake—I advised the technician to handle the object with great care, lest it stir in the midst of trance and bite her fingers as she worked on it. There was of course no need for breathing tubes in Radu's nostrils. But I do believe she sewed his lips shut, with a special cord…
One more job for Marie, and the most difficult and dangerous of her career. But I assured her that she was quite free to reject the job if she had wished, and she was well rewarded indeed for its successful completion.
Within a year of Radu's last visit to Citizen Louis Sade in his cell, the former marquis was released from prison. In 1801 he was rearrested, by yet another French government, charged with obscenity, and locked up again in the Charenton asylum. There he spent the thirteen remaining years of his life.
* * *
Melanie's child by a previous relationship, little Auguste, accompanied his mother and her new husband to England in the summer of 1794. That same season saw the fall of Robespierre, who was shot in the jaw before being carried to the scaffold. Before her marriage, Marie Grosholtz held in her lap the Incorruptible's lacerated head, and did her routine work with plaster and with wax. By that time, the job had become only a job.
In London little Auguste fell in with his paternal grandfather, himself a successful refugee. Old Monsieur Dupin conceived a liking for this youngster, wanted him to bear the family name, and more or less adopted him. I have heard that Melanie's child, like many another exile, returned in a few years to France, at a time when Bonaparte promised glory, and that in later life he formed some vague connection with the Parisian police.
Melanie was saddened by the separation from her son, half-brother to her other children who were to be. However, her new life in America as Mrs. Radcliffe, wife of a successful young lawyer, brought her considerable happiness. And in any case, there was nothing she could do about Auguste.
The Philip Radcliffe who so narrowly escaped the guillotine lived on another sixty years and more. He was eventually brought down by a stray cannonball in one of the early battles of the American Civil War, as he tried stubbornly to work his Virginia fields, meanwhile cursing the authors of yet one more rebellion.
Sanson's eldest son and chief assistant, Gabriel, one of dear Constantia's many lovers, died unexpectedly in 1795, in an accidental fall from the platform of the guillotine, whilst displaying his last severed head. It is possible that his foot slipped in a smear of blood.
I have heard it whispered that the head he was holding moved in his hands and startled him, which would seem a certain indication that it was that of another vampire. I offer no explanation.
Before bidding farewell to the modern Radcliffes, I assured them that the odds were very small that they would ever have to worry about their family nemesis again. I had to admit, though, the real possibility that their grandchildren would encounter some such difficulty—probably some time in the vicinity of the year 2090.
If it should prove to be so, I trust that their descendants will feel free to call on me for help. I will grant it willingly, if I am still alive to do so—and I have every intention of being as fully alive as ever. The matter will still be a matter of honor, no less than ever before.
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