The Truth is Dead

by Marcus Sedgwick

  “And the Jews, the Jews. You should see what they do to the Jews. Two thousand years of persecution. What kind of legacy is that for a nice Jewish boy like you?”

  Jesus bowed his head and mumbled a prayer.

  “But this is only the beginning. The really good stuff isn’t done by your guys to the other lot, pagans, unbelievers, whatever. No, the fun really gets going when the Christians start tearing each other apart. You know this as well as I do – real hatred is between brothers.”

  More pictures of war followed. Massacres of Catholics by Protestants; of Protestants by Catholics.

  The eyes of Jesus burned but he could not look away.

  “I reckon we’ve seen enough of that, don’t you? Now there’s just one last thing I want to show you.”

  The blank window filled with an image of the night, or so it first appeared. Millions of tiny lights glittered against a blue-black sky. And then the camera began to zoom in. The millions became thousands, and the thousands became hundreds. The dots of light took on a troubling complexity until just a few filled the screen. They were not stars, not these, and Jesus felt his stomach knot in revulsion.

  “We’ve got a smell function here, if I can find the right button.” The nail tapping at the remote was now oddly hooked and thick and grimy.

  A smell drifted through the desert. The smell of scorching fat and the acrid stink of burning hair.

  And now just one figure, wreathed in flames, was visible. The woman’s rags had burnt away, and her skin was blackened and her face was in a place beyond pain. No, not beyond pain, but at the furthest reaches of pain, and the only place beyond it is death.

  “Popcorn?”

  The man held out a bucket. Jesus knocked it from his hand, scattering the popcorn over the ground, where it turned again to pebbles and grit. For a second, the cheerful, inquisitive, businesslike face of the figure changed, and not even the mirrors fastened to the man’s face could conceal the red fire in his eyes. And then the fire was hidden again.

  “Yeah, sure, you got upset,” he said. “Only to be expected. Who’s the woman? You wanna know who she is? Does it matter? Pagan, heretic, witch, who cares? My point is, she’s burning – hell, they’re all burning – because of you. Because of what you teach. Because of what it makes men do. But you can stop it. Just walk away. Give it all the finger. The disciples, the water into wine shtick, the lepers, the woman who washes your feet with her hair, the guy you bring back from the dead, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the death on the tree, the whole lot. Say the word and it’s gone. Quite literally never happens. And when that goes, everything else goes too. No persecutions, no crusades, no burning babes like this one here. We’re all laughing.”

  Jesus stared into the desert and saw an unexpected last brilliant flaming of red ochre before the darkness came.

  “Let’s get it on paper, shall we? Not that I wouldn’t take your word, but it’s good to have these things on file. No need to read the small print; it’s just the usual stuff for the lawyers – you know what they’re like. Just sign here. In blood. No, only kidding. It’s not like we’re a couple of spindly goths hanging round a graveyard in Sheffield. Ink’s fine. Use this. Just click on the top there and it … you got it. Thaaaaat’s great. OK, OK. Give you a lift back into town? No? Suit yourself.”

  And then Satan was gone, leaving Jesus alone on the bleak mountainside with the darkness upon him. And the screen was just the stars in the night sky, and the soft seat was a flat rock.

  And Jesus thought about the smile on the face of Satan as he left and the truth came to him at last, and he allowed himself a glimpse of the future as it now stood. He saw what would become of the world. Saw that the evil was now greater. Saw that what had been small points of flame was now one great conflagration.

  And then, not knowing whether to go up to the mountain top, where still a little light might be found, or down into the endless black of the valley, he cast himself onto the stony ground.

  And Jesus wept.

  THE BURNING GLASS

  Marcus Sedgwick

  In May 1814, following his abdication, the former Emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled by the allied governments to the Mediterranean island of Elba.

  In the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris there are some extraordinary machines from across the ages of scientific invention. Here hangs Foucault’s famous Pendulum, whose gentle swings disclose the rotation of the earth, and here also sits another of his great inventions: a multiple contraption comprising a large wooden table under which rests an enormous pair of bellows. On top of the table there are various clamps and tubes of brass construction. There is a tuning fork, a series of seven small round mirrors on spindles, and a small lens able to spin freely and at great speed. There is something a bee-keeper would recognize as a smoke generator. With this unlikely assortment of instruments, in 1862 Foucault determined the speed of light to within 0.6 per cent of its currently accepted value. Next to the machine is a larger but at first glance similar-looking apparatus. On the whole it seems a clumsy, unsophisticated ancestor of Foucault’s cunning device, waiting in vain to evolve into something that actually works; but in fact its true function remains a mystery to this day.

  A small brass plaque bears the name of its creator, an illustrious predecessor of Foucault’s: Antoine Laurent Lavoisier.

  December 1814. The one-time King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, First Consul of the French Republic, Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, stood at the railing of the terrace, his hands clamped to the cold iron balustrade. He stared gloomily down across the grounds of the house, across the town, to where he could, if he stood on tiptoe, catch a glimpse of the bay, a knife of sullen water piercing the coast of Elba.

  He tried to outstare the cold grey eye of the sea for a moment longer, then spun on his heel and stomped inside to his bedroom.

  The sea. The irony was not lost on him. Apart from maybe that early glorious victory at Point L’Eguillete, he’d never been any good with the sea. To think he’d originally sought a naval commission! Thank God he’d studied artillery at the École in the end. Guns were simpler; you knew where you were with a gun: either it was pointed at you, or you were pointing it at someone else. Yes, the sea had dogged him always; it had always been there. Growing up on a small island had fixed that destiny for him, yet he had never understood the sea. And yes, the British fleet was unassailable, as it had been in Egypt, as it had been at Trafalgar. He banished the name as soon as it reared in his head, but he was left with the inevitable self-confession that his failures at sea were not only due to British ships, but the bald fact that he had always been useless at naval matters. He had long ago given up being angry at why, when his encyclopedic knowledge of and skill at warfare on land had secured the imperial title for him, his decisions at sea had always been ineffectual at best, contradictory and suicidal at worst.

  Yes, the sea, the sea. And yet now, with a last twist of fate, it would be the sea that would bring him his salvation. Even now, somewhere out in the Mediterranean, that salvation would be approaching on a small sloop from Sicily.

  It was getting dark; night would come and then there was the long emptiness to be got through. He glared at his bed in the corner of the fine room, the typical French bateau lit: another reminder of the sea. He would lie adrift there again through the small hours, gazing at the ceiling in the half-light, brooding, planning, plotting.

  A tedious image of Mathilde, the slow-witted maid who performed general serving duties, flashed through his mind, and he decided to pour a large glass of Armagnac himself. It was foul weather, cold and damp, though at least it was not raining for once. He swilled the brandy around the glass, closed his eyes and inhaled the distilled sunshine that reminded him of happier days, of the vineyards of Corsica, of his youth, of girls he had caressed, then poured the fire of the drink down his throat, rang the bell to have supper in his room, and stee
led himself for the clumsiness of Mathilde and the soup tureen.

  It was a strange exile, he thought as he lay in a warm bath the next morning. Ever since the frozen hell of Moscow two years ago he’d been on the retreat, he could see that now, a series of defeats culminating in that drubbing at Leipzig. From there it had been just six months till the allied forces took Paris and days later forced his abdication. And yet, rather than the guillotine or some jail, he’d been sent to Elba, to rule over the tiny island just as he had once ruled over half the civilized world. Under the ever watchful eye of the British Commissioner, his powers were limited to an extent, but damn them! If they intend to humiliate me, he had thought, they will think again. Alors, I shall rule this Lilliput with pride and skill and I shall make the people love me!

  Even before the Elbans knew he was coming, there’d been riots against French rule. Yet, when he’d stepped onto the quayside in May he’d won the crowd over in under an hour. Six months later and they loved him, yet even in this success there was danger, and Napoleon knew from his spies that his ultimate jailers, the allied powers, were planning a more permanent solution for him. There was some talk of exile to some remote British rock in the South Atlantic, while other informers whispered over a drink that his fate lay in a short drop with a rope around his neck.

  Napoleon had laughed at that, and his spy had choked on his drink. “If they can’t give me the honour of the guillotine,” he said, “I won’t give them the satisfaction of dangling for them.” He fished inside his tunic and pulled out a small black taffeta bag held on a thin gold chain about his neck. “I’ve always had this with me, and if the time comes to use it, then use it I shall.”

  The spy had gawped at the bag, his thoughts racing at exactly what hideous poison lay within.

  No, thought Napoleon, it was not exactly imprisonment to rule over twenty thousand peasants from a well-appointed house, with a stipend of two million francs, and with a court containing, among others, a treasurer, four chamberlains, a military governor, a doctor, a chemist, a butler, eight chefs, two valets, two equerries, twenty-seven stable hands, a director of music, two rather pretty singers, two washerwomen, a porter, footmen, and various young servants, even if one of them was the dreadful Mathilde. It was not jail, he knew that, for he had experienced true imprisonment: two weeks in the Chateau d’Antibes in the wake of Robespierre’s downfall.

  Thoughts of Robespierre begat memories of the days of blood, and his mind drifted back to the revolution. The revolution had given him everything. With the old order swept away, a man like him, with a decisive, military mind, had risen to the top so very easily. He took the revolution for what it was; he neither loved it nor hated it: he had used it.

  And yet, as fortunes unwound and people’s stars rose and fell, he had tasted the best of it and the worst. There had been so much death, so many men sent to the guillotine, and for what? For ideals? For noble causes? No! For treachery and fear. He saw things like no one else did, that many executions were so very pointless, but in those days, before he became First Consul, there was nothing he could do, except watch with the crowd as men made their way up the short flight of steps to the high, hanging blade. Men like the King himself, Louis; poets and writers like Chénier and de Gouges; men like Saint-Just and Robespierre and Danton, who had started the thing in the first place; and truly great men, like the genius scientist Lavoisier. Napoleon remembered what Lagrange, the mathematician, had said: “It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but France may not produce another like it in a century.”

  Too bad. There were many headless corpses in the cemeteries of Paris.

  Napoleon Bonaparte rose from his steaming hot bath, an addiction he still fed, and pulled the bell rope. It would take at least five minutes for either of his ageing valets to make it from the servants’ quarters up to his rooms, and he contemplated his naked self in the full-length mirror in his dressing room. It was not a superb sight, and the corners of his mouth turned down ever so slightly. It was true he had lost some weight recently, and for what he had in mind for his future, that was just as well. If he was to command loyalty and passion in his men once again, he would need to cut a dashing figure; and with his lack of height the last thing he could afford was to be overweight. Still, there was a way to go yet: a few months, perhaps; he would have to speak to the chef. He would need to spend more time riding. Then maybe he’d recapture the looks of his youth.

  But, oh God, his hair was thinner than ever. Once, it had been long and flowing; now the remaining strands clung to his head like thin black cotton. He reached for the small green bottle of hair tonic and began to massage a good dollop into his scalp.

  There was a brief tap at the door, and the elder of the valets crept into the room and, apparently unmoved by the corpulent nudity before him, began to lay out items of clothing for the former Emperor of the French. Napoleon ignored the man, but then was surprised to realize that the old stone was actually speaking to him.

  “Your Imperial Majesty, I am to inform you that we have received word that your visitor will be arriving tonight.”

  “What? What? So soon?”

  “Yes, sir. This evening. Shall it please your majesty to receive the monsieur for dinner?”

  Napoleon spoke to the room, not to the man. “Indeed. It shall. It shall please me very much.”

  “Very good, sir. And may I inform the footmen and the butler of the gentleman’s name?”

  “No,” hissed Napoleon. “You may not.”

  “Sir?”

  “He has no name here. Do you understand me? No name.”

  The old valet nodded. He knew better than to do anything other than back out of the room, still nodding, bowing as low as his old bones would let him.

  No name, though in Napoleon’s mind the monsieur had only one name: Salvation.

  But as the day passed, it looked unlikely that Monsieur Salvation would arrive that evening, as the weather turned up a petulant storm that threatened to keep all but the largest ships at bay.

  Napoleon sulked. He’d lost interest in Elba already. It was a rock in the Mediterranean, of little consequence, not a major trading post as he’d been led to believe. The people might love him but they refused to pay their taxes; his retinue, his Lilliputian court and his guardsmen were costing him a fortune; and there was no sign of his two million francs from “King” Louis. The allies had set up the puppet king to rule in his place; surely the fop wouldn’t have the nerve to go against British orders and not pay Napoleon his money? To think he’d left lands worth a hundred and sixty million francs to come to this crap hole!

  In a fug of unhappiness he did what he always did these days and called for his doctor, the treasurer, the grand marshal of the palace, and a pack of cards. They played vingt-et-un all morning. Napoleon cheated terribly, everyone pretended not to notice, he lost anyway, and then sulked even worse.

  “Pah!” he exclaimed, turning the elegant card table upside down with one swing of his left riding boot. Three pairs of eyes rolled in their sockets and then watched the retreating back of the “Emperor”, who stole off into the depths of the house.

  “He needs a woman,” declared the grand marshal, picking up cards.

  “He’s had too many of those,” said the treasurer, thinking of the expense.

  “What he needs,” said the doctor, “is a war.”

  The other two looked at him, slightly appalled.

  “It’s all he knows how to do well,” the doctor said, shrugging to excuse himself. It wasn’t his fault the man was a maniac.

  Napoleon’s way led him blind into the domestic quarters of the servants, where he joylessly pinched the bottom of the prettiest chambermaid, who screamed because she knew she was expected to, not because she felt like it, and then he found himself standing in the kitchens. It was mid-morning; there was no one around, but various ingredients for the day’s meals lay at hand: fresh bread from the market, some jugs of milk still warm from whatever fetid cow h
ad been assaulted that morning, some palm-sized fish that from their smell were not as fresh as the fishmonger had claimed, eggs and fruit and vegetables. He smiled, then, hearing someone coming, slipped something into his pocket and stole out into the courtyard, wiping the smile from his face.

  He hurried through the rain and into the house by the main entrance, sweeping up the steps.

  “Bertrand!” he called. “Bertrand! Where is that man?”

  Footmen began scurrying around, and within minutes Napoleon’s most loyal aide, the Comte Henri-Gratien Bertrand, was hurrying down from his room.

  “Sir?” he said, brushing his greying hair back over his head with a furtive gesture and tucking his shirt tails in.

  Napoleon seemed not to know or care. “Walk with me, Henri,” he said. “My heart is heavy. All this waiting – I cannot bear this inaction! It is death.”

  Napoleon threw a brotherly arm round Bertrand’s shoulder, an unfamiliar gesture on his part, but Bertrand knew better than to question anything. They walked around the house twice and then turned into the drawing room, where the doctor and his friends were still playing cards.

  “Ah, gentlemen!” Napoleon declared as they came up to watch the game. “Bertrand and I were just discussing this awful weather. I fear it will last all week, but Bertrand assures me it will pass by this evening. What do you think?”

  “Oh,” said the treasurer, a dimwit, and even shorter than Napoleon. “Well, I … that is…”

  “It may continue,” pronounced the grand marshal with great deliberation, “or then again, it may not.”

  The doctor sighed.

  “Quite so, quite so,” said Napoleon, “but whatever, this atmosphere has given me dreadful rheum.”