The Black Tower

by Louis Bayard

  “I’m not ready.”

  “I know.”

  He drops onto the settee. Holds his head in his hands.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.”

  “Well, I imagine every king feels that way. When he starts out. And then he finds his way, doesn’t he?”

  The contours of his new suit collapse, inch by inch.

  “I sometimes wish…”

  “What?”

  “I wish you’d left me back in Saint-Cloud.”

  With more time, I might be able to dissect the pang that catches me midsection. I could even ask myself if he’s right. But in the next instant, the massive salon doors are flung open, and four gendarmes rush in.

  There must be some mistake, I want to say. I haven’t sent for you yet.

  “In the name of His Majesty Louis the Eighteenth, we hereby arrest you, Charles Rapskeller…”

  Stunned, Charles rises from his settee.

  “…for the crime of conspiring against the life of our beloved monarch…”

  “Beloved who?” he whispers.

  “…and you, Hector Carpentier, as accomplice to aforementioned act.”

  They trip over the words, that’s the first sign. And their uniforms don’t fit them much better than Vidocq’s suit fits me. Monsieur may have dressed up his lackeys, but they still smell unmistakably of the barrières.

  “How dare you?” The voice of civilization comes at them from behind. “Leave at once!”

  It takes but a single club to silence the Marquis. Down he goes on the silk runner, like a cartload of wood.

  After that…well, it’s doom, that’s all. Struggle as I might, I’m pinned limb by limb. To my left, I see a boot catching Charles in the temple. I see him crumple and fall. A hand closes round my throat….

  The strange part is I never once call for aid. (Who, after all, would come?) But just as the canvas sack is placed over my head, I do manage to say:

  “He’ll know.”

  No antecedent, of course. They might as easily think I’m talking of God. In truth, they make no such mistake.

  “Your Vidocq will be dead before the sun has set,” they say.

  And then, almost as an afterthought:

  “So will you.”

  CHAPTER 45

  The Fate of Parricides

  AFTERWARD, WHAT WILL amaze me most is the speed of it all. One moment, we’re bidding farewell to the Duchesse d’Angoulême; the next, we’re saying hello to the Hôtel de Ville.

  All the middle stages are skipped. No trial, no appeal. No cell in the Conciergerie. Two men named Cornevin and Husson are ushered out of a holding pen; Charles and I are ushered in; the lock clicks. Everything is carried off with a minimum of fuss.

  In the end, I would guess, no more than a handful of officials needed to be bribed. The rest simply absorb us into their appointed rounds. At the strike of three in the afternoon, for instance, a guard comes to tell us:

  “It’s time.”

  “For what?” mumbles Charles, still drifting in and out of consciousness.

  The man doesn’t stay to answer. And when the next guard comes, he says only:

  “This way.”

  A long drafty corridor…a flight of stairs…we stop in a dark vaulted chamber.

  “Sit,” says the guard.

  The dawning comes in three stages. First: a sound of splashing, as if the Seine had overrushed its boundaries—broken at intervals by human laughter. A crowd is gathering. Outside. In the Place de Grève.

  The second clue: the white-haired priest by the door. His name is Father Montès, and he’s chaplain-in-chief to the Paris prisons.

  And finally: that stout, doughy, agreeable-looking fellow in the frock coat and rumpled tricorn hat. His name is Charles-Henri Sanson, and he is public executioner of Paris. He’s the man who held up the heads of Louis the Sixteenth and Marie-Antoinette to the baying mob. He’s about to do the same to us.

  “Good afternoon,” he says, with a bashful smile.

  Somebody strips me of my jacket. Somebody else ropes my wrists behind me and undoes my shirt. Cold metal grazes against my neck; locks of hair begin to fall on my shoulder.

  “You’ve got the wrong men,” I say.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “We’re not Cornevin and Husson. My name is Dr. Hector Carpentier…”

  “I see.”

  “…and this is Charles Rapskeller. Brother to the Duchesse d’Angoulême.”

  “Mm.”

  “The lost dauphin, do you hear? If you harm a hair on his head, you will be guilty of regicide. Do you know what that means?”

  And for a second, the word actually seems to splinter his self-possession. His eyes startle open, and with a shrug of apology, he says:

  “Honestly, where’s my head? We’ve one thing to do before we go.”

  He gives a nod, and two of his assistants seize Charles, spread him across a stone platform.

  “Wait,” I say. “Wait.”

  They unroll the sleeve of his shirt. (“Nice fabric,” I hear one of them mutter.) They pin down his right forearm. Unfurl his balled fingers.

  “What are you doing?” I shout.

  “Just a little formality,” answers Sanson.

  Like a child with his nose buried in a primer, he begins to recite in a singsongy voice.

  “By order of Penal Code Provision 23-A, subsection 9…”

  “Please,” I say. “You’ve got the wrong man.”

  “…any person found truly guilty of conspiring against the King’s life is, in the eyes of the state, guilty of parricide…”

  His hand gropes toward a butcher’s cleaver. Raises it toward the ceiling.

  “…and receives punishment commensurate with same.”

  For a second or two, the blade hovers there, jeweled in a prism of light. Then down it comes.

  “No!”

  In the same breath as my cry, the blade bisects the exact point where Charles’ arm meets his hand.

  A shriek…a squall of red…and Charles sinks to the floor, blood rolling out in tides.

  With a businesslike motion, Sanson sweeps the severed hand into a potato sack, calmly ties it round. Then, catching sight of my face, he says:

  “No worries, Monsieur. You get to keep yours.”

  “For God’s sake,” I gasp. “Can’t you—can’t you wrap the wound? Can’t you…”

  The words fly out before I see their absurdity.

  “He’ll bleed to death!”

  “Give the fellow a blanket,” instructs Sanson. “And don’t worry so much about waking him up. Best for him if he doesn’t.”

  All their attention turns to me now. The assistants bind my feet together. They throw a jacket over my back and knot the sleeves under my chin. A cold sweat breaks out across my brow. My brain is dashing against the walls of my skull.

  “Come, my son,” says Father Montès.

  IT’S RAINING. SOMEHOW in the last hour, the sun went into hiding, and the clouds came, and none of it makes the slightest difference to the thousand spectators gathered in the Place de Grève. They’ve been here, many of them, since early this morning (before I even knew I was to be their entertainment), and now, as the four o’clock hour approaches, they lie piled atop one another with a geological force, like layers of shale. They jockey for views on the steps of the Palais de Justice, they dangle from alehouse balconies, they make the very bridges shudder beneath their force.

  A group of gendarmes walks me toward the gatehouse threshold, dragging Charles close behind. At the sight of us, the roar comes down like a gale. I stagger back, but a hand keeps me erect. Another guides me toward the waiting cart.

  Sanson heaves himself in first. Then comes Charles, still unconscious, still bundled in that blood-sodden towel. Then I come.

  Around us, a single word is being chanted again and again, a million times over.

  “Two! Two! Two!”

  Guillotinings are rare enough in these early days of the Resto
ration, and to have the spectacle of two condemned men in the same afternoon is an unheard-of pleasure. Just like the old days, you can feel the crowd thinking. Before the Old Growler got a bad flavor to it.

  An officer gives the order, and the cart gusts forward, as though propelled by the din of the spectators. Cobble by cobble we pass, the crowd parting only to close round us again—through the Quai aux Fleurs (a discombobulating smell of roses), over the Pont-au-Change, along the Quai de Gesvres.

  Strange that, in this moment, all I can think of are other people’s heads. Popping from doorways and windows. Peering out from behind lampposts and storefronts. Gazing down on us with a furious lust.

  Next to me, Father Montès raises his crucifix and intones…something…it might be Latin, it might be Carpathian. The hubbub drowns out all the other sounds, and the only thing that breaks through to me, finally, is a jolt: Charles’ head, jostled onto my shoulder.

  I stare into his white, white face. A tiny flicker round the eyelids. A palpitation of the lower lip. Not much more.

  He’ll die, I think. Before they even get round to killing him.

  And once more, I find myself wishing my father could be here. Or Vidocq. But the first of them is long dead, and the other soon will be. And in another ten minutes, I’ll be joining them.

  “Charles.”

  My legs and hands are bound. The only way to rouse him is with my voice.

  “Charles, can you hear me?”

  I feel it rather than hear it: the breath passing through his lips.

  “I need you to look at me. Right into my eyes, can you do that?”

  The lids widen, the pupils dance in their sockets.

  “We’re going on an outing,” I tell him. “It’ll be great fun.”

  “No,” he murmurs. “Rain…”

  Rain, yes, battening his lids back down, trickling down his chin like drool.

  “Forget the rain,” I say. “Forget everything, can you do that? Just look into my eyes. Charles, you must do this for me.”

  Several more seconds pass before his pupils lock into focus.

  “Good. That’s good. Now just keep looking. That’s all you have to do.”

  The cart rolls on and on, past rows of shops, past walls of faces. Laughs and jeers…boots stamping in mud…children swinging from shop signs…we notice none of it. There is a dire intimacy to us now, as if we were soldiers in a surrounded redoubt.

  At length, a measure of color returns to his face. The breath begins to stream at regular intervals. The back of his eye pulses with light.

  And then the cart grinds to a stop.

  “Bear it bravely,” says Father Montès, shoving the crucifix toward me.

  He’s hoping I’ll kiss it before I go, but I’m too caught up by the sight of Charles, being dragged down a stepladder. And the sight of this scaffold: iron, wood, and ropes. And looming above it, that familiar triangle of steel. Old Growler. The Widowmaker.

  “Had it waxed just this morning,” Sanson reassures us.

  I glance toward the great clock face on the façade of the Hôtel de Ville. Two minutes till four o’clock, and every possible vantage has been seized. Tables and chairs have been rented for the occasion. Gamins hang from chimneys and window bars, calling down insults. Just below the platform, two men have stationed themselves with bowls for catching the blood.

  This is what I’ve saved Charles for.

  He has to be dragged up the steps, but once he’s atop the scaffold, he’s able somehow to walk the last few steps unaided—and with a serenity quite astonishing in the circumstances. The onlookers roar their approval.

  “There’s a man for you! Not a tremor!”

  “Brave bugger, isn’t he?”

  One woman, quite young and fair, blows Charles kisses. Her face is contorted with weeping. She’ll write a novel about him, I think. A bad one.

  “Take me first!” I yell up to Sanson. “I want to go first!”

  “Rules are rules.”

  Two gendarmes lay Charles down on the swinging plank, flat on his stomach. From the crowd, a low keening hum of pleasure begins to well, ascending in pitch and volume with each stage in the ritual: right leg bound, left leg bound. Mmmm…Mmmmmmmm…

  “I’ve a statement to make!” I shout. “I’ve a confession! Please! I want to confess everything!”

  “Then let me finish my business here,” Sanson calls down, the first hint of aggrievement in his voice. “Then I can tend to you, Monsieur.”

  The last ropes are attached. The plank is swung outward, taking Charles directly into the path of the blade. All that Sanson need do now is pull the cord.

  “A pardon is coming!” I cry. “Very soon! From the King himself!”

  “Never heard that one before,” says Sanson.

  “There’s a pardon, I tell you!”

  But I just give the crowd new fodder. Before twenty seconds have passed, the word is echoing back to me from every corner of the Place de Grève.

  “Pardon! Pardon! Pardon!”

  Which is, in fact, the last thing they want. Indeed, nothing would disappoint them more than a last-minute reprieve.

  And nothing seems less likely now. Charles is perfectly recumbent, perfectly still. Sanson is walking, with great purpose, toward the cord. All is lost.

  And then, over the building hum of the crowd, comes a shrill corvine cry, so different in character and intent that it creates a wall of stillness round it.

  “Stop!”

  I gaze out into the human ocean. From nowhere, a small eddy has appeared. Two royal guardsmen, beating a path through the crowd with the flats of their swords, and following in their wake—dressed like an avenger—the Duchesse d’Angoulême.

  “You must desist!” she shrieks. “These men are innocent!”

  At this moment, I’d wager no one in the Place de Grève is more terrified than she. Here, on every side, is the mob of her deepest and most private terrors. Showing her not a hint of reverence.

  “Get out with her!”

  “We don’t go and spoil her fun, do we?”

  “Send her back to the palace!”

  Undaunted, she makes straight for the scaffold, calling as she goes.

  “They are innocent, I tell you!”

  A discontented murmur rises from the populace, and at the foot of the scaffold, Sanson stands in frowning colloquy with one of his assistants.

  “Think we should get a move on….”

  “Behind schedule as it is….”

  “Rain’s going to rust the apparatus….”

  But this exchange gives way before a much larger sound.

  “You heard my daughter-in-law, Monsieur Sanson!”

  On the parapets of the Palais de Justice stands a figure of unassailable dignity. Garlanded in ribbons and medals. Clothed in all the perquisites of dynasty.

  The mere sight of him produces an altogether different sound in the crowd. For though many of them have never glimpsed the Duchesse d’Angoulême, this man they know.

  And now, much to the surprise of everyone about me, I begin to laugh. For if I’d had to pick a personal savior, the Comte d’Artois would not have been my choice.

  “These men are to go free!” he roars, unfurling a long document. “By order of the King!”

  A moment of abeyance follows, during which Sanson can be seen actively weighing the claims of his two masters: mob and monarchy. It takes him a good half minute to come down on the side of the latter.

  “Untie them, boys,” he says, in a resigned tone.

  And when the last rope is cut from my wrists, he tenders me his most gracious bow.

  “No hard feelings, I hope, Monsieur.”

  By the time the Comte reaches our cart, the rain has already begun to dissolve his face into the familiar features of Eugène François Vidocq. The Duchess, sodden and panting, is grabbing me by the torn edge of my shirt and shouting:

  “Can you save him?”

  And just then Charles’ whisper rises
up to us:

  “Don’t.”

  But Vidocq has already turned back toward the crowd, and in his most imperious voice, he’s bellowing:

  “Find me a tar pot!”

  Such is his ability to remain in character that a good dozen people set off running in as many directions, crying “Yes, Monsieur!” as they go. The first to come back is a fish merchant, who has somehow discovered a roofer, who is bearing with him even now a pot of black sludge, oozing steam.

  “Many thanks,” says the counterfeit Comte d’Artois, using his own coat to take the pot. “Hector, give Charles your hand. He’ll need something to squeeze.”

  The eyes of the lost dauphin are still glazed and opaque when Vidocq pulls the bloody towel from his arm and stares at those dangling fringes of vein and artery.

  “Very sorry, Your Majesty,” he says, making a quick genuflection. “It’s how we used to do it at sea.”

  And then he plunges Charles’ arm into the tar pot.

  Even Sanson flinches before the confluence of flesh and heat. The sizzle can be heard twenty yards away, the smell much farther. As for the scream, well, the Duchess must stop her ears for a good three minutes before it dies out.

  It’s so consuming, Charles’ pain, that only much later in the evening do I think to look at my own hand, where I find two fingers swollen and purple. Broken by the sheer force of his grip.

  CHAPTER 46

  Foiled Hopes

  MUCH LATER THAT night—after Charles has at last been lulled to sleep, after the Duchess has left us with promises to return the next morning—only then do Vidocq and I feel at ease to tell each other our stories.

  “Four men?” he shouts into his wineglass. “That’s all it took to bring you down? Ha! They needed eight for me.”

  He was stepping onto the Marquis’s portico when they came at him. With everything they had, he said. Saddler’s awl. Poleax. Sheath knife. Cooper’s adze.

  He could tell right away they were trying to subdue, not kill, so he made it as hard for them as he could. Disarmed one with a well-timed kick. Clocked another with his elbow. Took out a kneecap or two, broke a windpipe. Might still be there if they hadn’t come at him with a road mender’s hammer.