Johnny Black, Soul Chaser: The Complete Series (Johnny Black, Soul Chaser Series)

by JJ Zep

  But, of course, my current predicament brought its own problems. What if they threw me into a dungeon and left me there to rot, how was I going to find Commodus then? I began to wish that Jitterbug had joined me on this mission. The little imp could be a pain in the behind sometimes, but he’d also helped me out of some tight corners. Ironically, Jitterbug was in the very place where I was now headed, except he was in the 21st century version of Paris, while I was stuck in…

  “What year is it?” I asked Duval.

  “1789,” he snapped back, “Don’t you have a calendar back at your chateaux?

  Paris, 1789, the year of the French Revolution. Just swell, I thought, this case was just getting better and better.

  As the prison cart trundled on, the streets changed from dirt to cobblestones, and the noise of the hooves and wheels became almost deafening. Soon that sound was accompanied by shouts and screams and curses and manic laughter, by metal striking metal, and by distant strains of music. The streets were smoky too, and filled with filthy, half-starved peasants. But worst of all was the stench, which was worse than anything imaginable. Let’s just say that the city that would in years to come would be synonymous with romance, was a filthy hellhole worse than any I’d ever seen in Hades.

  We arrived eventually at an imposing stone building with eight towers, a dry moat and a massive wooden gate. When the gate remained closed, the captain of the cavalry sent one of his soldiers to pound on it, until a small panel in the door slid back.

  “Yes?” a voice said.

  “Open up in the name of the king!”

  “Bugger off! We’re full up. Take your prisoners to the Bastille.”

  “What? You dare refuse an officer of the king’s cavalry.”

  “I’d refuse the king himself. We’ve no space, I tell you.”

  “Look, it’s only two more, surely you can…”

  “Sorry, full up.”

  “Okay, twenty livre.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Done.”

  Shortly after the gates swung open and we entered a large courtyard where hundreds of prisoners were milling around. The prison warder came round to the back of the cart to collect his pay-off and inspect his new charges.

  “This one’s a bit of a toff, isn’t he?” he said looking at me. “Surely he’d be better off at Saint-Aintone. Won’t last five minutes in here.”

  “Throw him in with the pornographers,” the captain said, “They’re less likely to cut his throat.”

  “Can’t do it chief, we’ve had a run on smut-merchants this week. That cell really is chock-a-block.”

  “Put him wherever then. I don’t have time.”

  After the cavalry detachment left, I was separated from Claude Duval and taken to a small cell at the top of one of the towers. There were already four men in the cell and they regarded me suspiciously.

  “Who are you then?” one of them demanded.

  “I’m the Count Le Noir,” I said, “of Provence.”

  “Oh, a noble hey, sent here to spy on us, no doubt.”

  “No, I…”

  “Well, speak man, cat got your tongue?”

  “I was arrested for highway robbery.”

  “Pah! A likely story. He’s a spy I tell you!”

  “Forgive Jacques’ coarse manners, monsieur,” one of the others, a giant of a man, said. He extended a huge hand and shook with a surprisingly limp handshake. “I am Georges Danton, this is Rene Herbert, and this here is Maximilian Robespierre.”

  “Call me Max,” Robespierre insisted as he shook my hand.

  “The hot-head over there is Jacques Roux,” Danton continued.

  “Hot-head!” Roux said, “Where has all your calm, scholarly debate got us thus far, hey? It’s time for action I say. Put the king on trial, along with his Austrian woman, throw open the granaries, universal suffrage for all I say…”

  Ignoring him, Robespierre said, “So, a highwayman are you? You hardly look the part.”

  “Accused as a highwayman,” I said. “I’m not one.”

  “Ah, a sad reflection on the current state of French justice. Fortunately you find yourself in the company of, not one but two lawyers, should you require our services.”

  “That’s most kind,” I said. “And why are you being held?”

  “Trumped up political charges, based on an article in Rene’s newspaper. Strictly a misdemeanor.”

  “Ha!” Roux said. “That’s how it starts. First they get you on some trivial charge, and the next thing you know, your head’s on the chopping block. Liberty, fraternity, equality for all, I say!”

  “Hear, hear,” Herbert said.

  The door to the cell suddenly swung open and a guard stepped in, “Le Noir,” he said. “A visitor to see you. A lady.”

  “Royal paymasters come to collect their dividend so soon, have they?” Roux shouted after me.

  “Oh, do shut up, Jacques.” Danton said.

  cinq

  I followed the guard to an alcove at the end of the tower, where my visitor waited, clad in an ankle-length, hooded cloak. Even before I smelled her unique perfume, I had a pretty good idea who she was. No one knew where I was, not even Dope or Jitterbug, and the only one who could have tracked me down so quickly was Pandora Jain.

  “Hello, Johnny,” she said, removing the hood, “Remember me?”

  “How could I forget?” I said. How indeed, Pandora looked as gorgeous as ever. Even so, I was determined not to let my guard down around her.

  “What brings you to Paris?” I asked.

  “Oh, a bit of shopping, bit of fine dining, taking in the culture, the usual stuff.”

  “In Paris, 1789?”

  “Oh no, in Paris, 2012.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course,” Pandora said. “I keep forgetting you’re new to all this. They obviously haven’t told you about the turnstile.”

  “The turnstile?”

  “Kind of a revolving door in space-time. You go in one side at say, 2012 and step out the other side at, oh, I don’t know, 1789.”

  “And that’s how you got here?”

  Pandora ignored my question. “Anyway,” she said, “so I’m walking along the Champs-Élysées, and who should I see slipping into the Lido, but my old friend Jitterbug. So, I asked myself, what would Jitterbug be doing in Paris of all places?”

  “He’s on vacation,” I said.

  “Is that what he told you?” Pandora laughed. “The Jitterbug Pavarotti I know is hardly likely to vacation in Paris. He’s more your Tiberia type of guy, or maybe ancient Mesopotamia, where they’d worship him as a god. Paris, nah, much too pedestrian for old Jit, even with the Folies Bergère.”

  “I still don’t understand how seeing Jitterbug in Paris, 2012, brought you here?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Pandora said, sounding irritable. “So, like I was saying, seeing Jit wandering around Paris aroused my suspicions, so I got Ringo to tail him for a while…”

  “Ringo?”

  “A friend,” she said. “Low and behold if Jitterbug doesn’t head for the Place de la Concorde, poke his head through the turnstile and take a peak. So I’m thinking, why would he do that? And then it suddenly dawns on me…” She paused for effect.

  “What does?”

  “Duh! He’s acting as a lookout for you, of course!”

  “A lookout? I’m afraid you have it all wrong Pandora, I’m working this case on my own.”

  “Ah ha! So you admit you’re working a case. Who is it then? Robespierre? Marat?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Confidential.”

  “Ah, come on. Johnny. Don’t you want to let widdle ol’ Pannie in on your widdle secret? You do, don’t you? Say you do.”

  “The maleficium mind trick?”

  “Damn you’re fast!”

  “Speaking of fast, how’d you track me down so quickly?”

  “Oh, that was easy,” Pandora said. “You hav
e a knack for getting yourself locked up, Johnny. All I did was check the prisons. This was the second one, after the Bastille.”

  Someone suddenly sneezed very loudly. “Excuse me,” Pandora said.

  “That wasn’t you.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “No, it seemed to come from the wall over there.”

  “Aitishoo!”

  “See, there it is again.”

  “Oh, you know these old prisons,” Pandora said. “Full of echoes.”

  “You’ve got an imp hiding in that wall, haven’t you?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Oh, Ringo,” I said. “Come out and show yourself.”

  “Stay where you are, Ringo,” Pandora snapped, then, “damn, you got me again, didn’t you?”

  “Come on out, Ringo,” I said again, and the imp stepped out from the stonework. For a few seconds he looked to be made of stone himself, but then his own color gradually returned and I was faced with a red imp, about Jitterbug’s height but more rotund, and with a huge nose. He wore a red soccer shirt with a crest featuring a winged bird. On his head was a yellow-and-black striped beanie that clashed with the rest of his outfit.

  “Eerm, all right then, missus?” he said.

  “Ringo,” Pandora said, “How many times have I told you to lay off the snuff!”

  six

  By the time I got back to my cell my head was spinning and not even Jacques Roux’s accusations of tyranny and treason could distract me from trying to figure out these new developments. This case was getting very complicated, very fast, and I hadn’t even tracked down Commodus yet. Now I had Pandora Jain to worry about, and she had an imp on the case, an imp who could track me with impunity, provided, of course, he stayed off the snuff.

  I wished again that I had Jitterbug with me, at least to deal with my imp problem. And that got me thinking about Jitterbug. Was his French vacation really a ruse to keep tabs on me? And if so, why? I’d have welcomed him along on the mission, so why the need for subterfuge?

  And then there was the mysterious turnstile, Pandora had mentioned. Where had she said that was? The Place de la Concorde, I was sure. I asked Robespierre where it was.

  “I assure you, monsieur,” he said, “that such a place does not exist in all of Paris.”

  “Who cares?” Roux said. “After the revolution, we’ll change the name of everything, anyway. Place Louis XV will be Place de la Revolution, or maybe even Place de la Concorde.” In your honor, he added sarcastically.

  So there was no Place de la Concorde, and likely no turnstile either. Pandora had lied to me. At least that was par for the course.

  The door to the cell creaked open again and a guard stepped in “Danton,” he said. “You and your boys are free to go, all charges dropped. Not you Le Noir, you’ll be with us a while yet.”

  The four men left the cell, but not before Jacques Roux had peppered me with some parting insults and Robespierre had passed me his card. “Should you need any assistance with your case or any other matters while you’re in Paris, I’d be delighted to be of service,” he said.

  The cell seemed incredibly lonely once they’d left and I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out how I might get out of my current predicament.

  As the shadows began to lengthen across the cell floor, the door swung open yet again and the guard said, “Le Noir, you made bail. Come on then, move your ass.”

  I was escorted from the prison and half-expected to find Pandora Jain waiting for me outside. Instead I found a luxurious coach with elaborately dressed coachmen, drawn by six white horses. The coach headed south, away from Paris and arrived some time later at the huge and scrawling Palace of Versailles.

  We approached the Palace on a gravel road and stopped in front of the impressive façade of blond stone. To either side of the approach were huge pools skirted by imposing iron statues. I had no idea why I was here or where I was supposed to go, but I needn’t have worried. The minute the coach came to a halt, a woman in a decorative blue gown and dark hair piled high on her head came rushing towards me.

  “Count Le Noir,” she said. “So glad you could come at such short notice.” Then, when she got closer, she dropped her voice and hissed. “Where the hell have you been? Marietta has been worried sick about you.”

  “I’ve been…”

  “Banged up, yes we know. But how did you manage to get yourself arrested as a bandit?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “We’ll talk later,” she said as a man approached us. I recognized him immediately as de Mariny, the man who had fought the duel with Le Noir earlier.

  de Mariny looked momentarily surprised, but recovered his composure quickly. “Jacques,” he said, “What a pleasant surprise! We thought you might have been waylaid by brigands.”

  “No such thing,” I said, “In fact, I find myself more at risk here at the palace than out in the country.”

  “Spoken like a true bumpkin,” he said. “I’m off for a spot of hunting with the king, will you join us?”

  “Thank you no,” I said, “I have the most frightful back-pain. It’s almost as though someone had run me through with a rapier.”

  “As you please,” de Mariny smirked.

  After he was gone, the woman led me into the palace. The first thing that hit me was the smell. Despite its magnificent façade and luxurious furnishings, Versailles smelled as bad as the worst streets of Paris. Not even the huge bowls of potpourri, placed everywhere, could hide the stink. I held my breath and followed the woman up a staircase and along a tiled corridor flanked on either side by numbered doors. At number sixty-six, the woman stopped and slid a key into the lock.

  She leaned closer and said, “We’ll talk later, at the banquet,” then planted a light kiss on my cheek. I turned the key and stepped into a sparsely furnished apartment, comprising of two rooms - a bedroom and a sitting room. What I really wanted was a hot bath, but there was neither a bathroom nor a basin, and no running water. At least there were some fresh clothes in the closet and I had just removed my shirt when there was a rapid knock at the door.

  I opened the door on an attractive, but sour-faced woman, of about forty. She looked furtively left and right and then pushed past me into the room.

  “Well,” she demanded.

  “Well, what?”

  “Don’t be coy with me, Jacques Le Noir. Have you decided to confess to the king or do I have do it for you?

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t…what?” She was staring at my lower abdomen and as I looked down I could see why. The wound de Mariny had inflicted there had opened up, and was bleeding again.”

  “Just a flesh wound,” I assured her.

  “Looks more serious than that,” she said. “I’ll send the court physician up. We can’t have you dying before you’ve done the deed.”

  “What deed would that be then?”

  “Until you’ve told the king about you and that Austrian slut.”

  “I really don’t know…”

  “Oh come on,” she said. “Everyone knows you’re a regular visitor to the queen’s bed chamber, everyone except that fool, Louis. You’re to confess everything and pray for the king’s forgiveness. Failing that, I Madame du Barry, will out you, not only as the queen’s lover, but also as a Jacobin conspirator and a traitor to France.”

  “But I’m not…”

  “Perhaps not,” she said. “But in these uncertain times, the mere accusation is enough to do for you.”

  sept

  After Madame du Barry left I had a visit from the court physician, a small man in spectacles and a wig, who moved in rapid, jerky movements. “My, my, that’s some gash, you’ve got there young man,” he said. “Rapier, was it?”

  “Some ruffians jumped me in Paris.” I said.

  “Blackguards!” the doctor exclaimed. “Well, I can do you a few stitches, but I’d strongly advise against any strenuous activity for the time being. No dancing at the ball tonight,
for example.”

  He cleaned up the wound, applied a foul-smelling ointment, and then stitched and bandaged it. During the procedure, I made sure that he didn’t see the wound in my back, which would have been a whole lot more difficult to explain away.

  With the doctor out of the way I went through Le Noir’s stuff to find some suitable attire for the evening’s ball. I picked out a coat, waistcoat and breeches that seemed to go together. I had no idea what people wore to these occasions, but when I looked into the mirror, I thought I looked passable. Le Noir was a handsome if somewhat effeminate man, somewhat resembling a girly, Gallic, Brad Pitt.

  A sneeze suddenly reverberated across the small apartment. “Oh booger,” Ringo said, “I thought I could hold that one in.”

  “Ringo,” I said, “Get out here, right now!”

  “Eerm,” he said, stepping away from the wall. “All right then, chief.”

  “No, I’m not alright. What, are you doing here?”

  “Just having a butchers like, you ken?”

  “No, I don’t ken. What the hell does that mean anyway?”

  “Keeping an eye on you chief, like the lady said.”

  “Well, I don’t want you keeping an eye on me, so you can just scoot.”

  “Can’t do that chief, never do, would it? The lady would have my plums for ping-pong if I was to leg it. You know how it is, chief. Just doing my job, like.”

  “Look Ringo, I don’t care what the lady told you. I don’t want you following me around. You’d better be gone by the time I get back.”

  “Erm, whatever you say boss. You wouldn’t mind bringing me a butty back from that do, would you? I’m dead hungry, me.”

  “No,” I said, “I won’t be bringing you anything back from the banquet. And I want you gone when I get back, understand?”

  “Or what?” Ringo said, flashing a smile that had all the warmth of an arctic winter, and showed his steak knife teeth to good effect.

  “Or I’ll file a complaint with the tribunal or the union or whatever else can be done in these matters.”

  “You do that,” Ringo said, “and you’ll find out that not all imps are lovable little scoundrels like your good friend, Jitterbug.” He looked at me and smiled and I suddenly wanted to be anywhere in the world other than where I was right now.