Newton's Cannon

by J. Gregory Keyes

  “No,” she said, with as much force as she could manage.

  “I'll come back if I can,” he said. “I do love you.”

  She reached for him, but it was with the wrong hand, and when she caught the smell of her ruined appendage, she nearly fainted again.

  “Crecy, stop him,” she pleaded.

  “Torcy will need every man at the bridge. I should go, too.”

  “She needs you, Crecy,” Nicolas said. “And of the two of us, you are better suited to protect her in the days to come.”

  “Sadly, I agree,” Crecy said, her voice quavering slightly. “Take care, my friend.”

  “Nicolas,” Adrienne said as he began stepping from the carriage.

  He stopped and closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said, with visible effort.

  “I love you. Please …”

  He shook his head again, eyes still closed. “I will return,” he said.

  And with that he ran from the carriage. A few moments later, it rocked into motion again.

  “I think I should wrap your hand,” Crecy said after a moment.

  “Let it be. I don't care.”

  “Adrienne, let the men kill themselves in foolish heroics. We shall survive, you and I. I will take care of you.”

  “I love him, Veronique.”

  “I know. But as I told you once before, if anyone can survive …”

  “Can you see it, Veronique? Can you see what happens?”

  Crecy took her under her arm, stroking her hair with her free hand. “If you wish,” she said.

  “Do it.”

  Torcy sat his horse as Nicolas and the sapper planted the charges beneath the bridge. The morning had broken fine and cool, real autumn at last. The tall trees shivered at the belated chill, releasing a thousand leaves to become boats on the surface of the river.

  “The charge may not be sufficient,” the sapper called up, his dark face pinched in concern.

  Torcy shrugged. “That is as it must be, then. Do your best.”

  Nicolas stuck his head from under the bridge. “It has to be enough. We have to stop them.”

  Torcy rolled his eyes. “Come here, Nicolas.”

  Nicolas complied, his face set in worried but determined lines. Torcy regarded him as he approached. “Why didn't you tell me that you had fallen in love with this woman?” he finally asked.

  “It was not your affair.”

  “No, apparently it was your affair. You and I have worked together for several years, Nicolas, and I have never seen your judgment so clouded.”

  Nicolas waved his hand impatiently. “My judgment is sound,” he snapped. “And I have served you well.”

  “You did not kill the king.”

  “It was beyond our ability. Some … thing … protects him.”

  “Very well,” Torcy said. “If your judgment is sound, then ride on and leave this business of the bridge to me.”

  “You need my help to stop them,” Nicolas insisted.

  “No, you see? This is what I meant about your judgment, Nicolas. If the charge is powerful enough, the king's men will be stopped. If it is not, they will not. What else can be done?”

  Nicolas frowned in sudden understanding. “You don't care if you stop them.”

  Torcy allowed himself a smile. “No, I do not. I do not play ‘Horatius on the Bridge’ for the benefit of your love, Nicolas, but so that I will be remembered as a man who died well. Do you understand?”

  Nicolas licked his lips. “There is no need for you to die at all.”

  “Bah. Nicolas, I have lived my whole life for the king and for France. I know what the Bastille is like, and I will not retire there. My country and king—whatever else they think of me— will know my death was honorable. But there is no need for you to stay, my friend.”

  “I've always been loyal to you, Father,” Nicolas returned.

  “You've been a good son; d'Artagnan raised you well. I'm proud of you. Now, go!”

  At that moment a shout went up from Torcy's musketeers across the bridge as they fell into a double line, muskets raised. Good men, those, for he now saw what they faced.

  At least a hundred of the Royal Horse thundered toward them. Torcy indulged himself in a moment of pride; he was a Colbert, still, a man to be reckoned with. He deserved a hundred horse at the very least.

  “Shit!” Nicolas swore, and raced to his horse and weapons.

  “Ride on, Nicolas, I beg you,” Torcy shouted.

  “The fuse isn't laid.”

  “It matters not. Ride on, Son.” Then he winced as the first fusillade of shots rang, fired by his own men, eight muskets cracking in near unison. They began reloading as the second row fired.

  The response from the Horse was a hailstorm. Three of his men went down, and carbine balls sang into the woods all around Torcy and Nicolas. Nicolas dropped to his knee, cocked his musket, and shot. Torcy shrugged and pulled out one of his own pistols, a wonderful weapon that had been his uncle's—a gift from the king.

  Nicolas changed guns; taking up his carbine he fired that, too.

  The second volley from the Horse finished Torcy's musketeers. The body of the sapper fell into the river, felled by a marksman or an unlucky bullet. The fuse was still not lit.

  “Shoot the charge,” Nicolas told him steadily, gesturing right. “If you move that way, you can see it. Shoot it.” He leapt up, drawing his kraftpistole and colichemarde, and ran across the bridge.

  Torcy watched him go, reflecting that Nicolas did not understand aesthetics. He intended to meet his killers standing squarely on the bridge, pistol cocked, defiant to the end.

  The Horse had no intention of engaging Nicolas; they had all dismounted, forming a wall of muzzles. When Nicolas was halfway across the bridge, they fired.

  Nicolas spun, and Torcy felt something brush one shoulder and something else slap him in the gut. He looked down in astonishment at his swiftly reddening shirt.

  “Damn,” he said.

  Nicolas fired the kraftpistole, and the reddish bolt jetted out far enough to touch the outer ranks of gunmen. Five of them pitched to the ground. Nicolas shouted something, raising his sword, as Torcy braced for the next volley. Instead, the captain of the Horse stepped from ranks, his own weapon drawn in salute. Nicolas, swaying somewhat, raised his blade to a guard position.

  Good for him! He had offended the Horse and bought his love a few more moments. It ruined Torcy's own plan, of course—by the time the Horse came across the bridge he would have lost too much blood to meet them defiantly. He sighed. Nicolas had been a good son. He deserved his father's help.

  Torcy staggered to the side of the bridge, squinting so as to see the keg of powder, looking back to follow how Nicolas was doing, an unaccustomed and unwelcome pride swelling in his chest.

  Nicolas had no feeling in his left arm, but then, he did not need his left arm. What he needed was more blood in his body to replace what leaked from his several musket wounds.

  A man in the uniform of an officer saluted him.

  “I am Captain Cleves. Lay down your sword and you will be treated honorably,” he promised.

  “One captain to another,” Nicolas panted. “If you will agree to wait here, with your troops, for one hour, I will surrender my arms.”

  “In an hour you will be dead of your wounds,” Cleves pointed out. “If you surrender now, I can have a surgeon tend to you.”

  “Give me your bound word, and I will surrender now.”

  Cleves hesitated for an instant, and then said, “I must be truthful. Only your courage and my honor prevents me from having my men cut you down as you stand. You and your companions attacked the king, Monsieur!”

  “Has the king been so good to you? I know what the household troops think of the king. Those men lying dead there were musketeers, all devoted to France. How many more of you will lay down your lives for a bewitched king?”

  “My duty is clear. Your words do not confuse me.”

  “I, myself, saw the dev
il that possesses him,” Nicolas snapped. He was rewarded by a general murmuring among the men.

  “Surrender and you can relate the tale.”

  Nicolas sighed heavily. “You are a man of honor, sir. You could have had my sword with a simple lie. The man is rare, these days, who has such scruples.”

  “I prefer to believe you wrong,” Cleves replied.

  “En garde,” Nicolas replied, “before I bleed to death.”

  Cleves beat a few times at his blade experimentally, nimbly shortening and lengthening the distance between. Nicolas held his ground, treating the feints as what they were, until Cleves suddenly lunged. Nicolas deflected the spearing blade and riposted in a low line toward his opponent's crotch. Cleves dropped his wrist and parried, but Nicolas had already disengaged, ghosting away from the hastily intervened weapon, darting up toward the captain's throat. Cleves stumbled back, and Nicolas bounded forward to follow his advantage. Unfortunately, his left leg was numb, and he went down on one knee. Cleves did not hesitate— everyone in the guards knew that Nicolas had never lost a duel. His point darted down. Nicolas' left arm was numb, but it could yet move. He got it up in time, gratified that the only feeling was a dull shock as the blade buried itself in bone. His own return thrust was merciful, straight into the heart. Cleves sobbed and fell.

  Nicolas climbed unsteadily to his feet.

  “Next, if you please,” he panted.

  Across the river, Torcy had decided that it was best to be very close to the charge. A pistol could miss at half a dozen paces, especially when one was shaking as he was, but it would not miss at a foot. He stopped ten paces away because he could still see Nicolas fighting. He watched until the boy had won, nodding his head. Then he took the last few steps and placed the muzzle of his weapon against the wooden cask.

  “I commend myself to thee, Lord,” he said. “Let you judge me, and no other.” He hesitated a second longer. “I loved you, my king,” he whispered. “Only because I loved you did I …” Then he tightened his lips. How stupid that death made men maudlin. He squeezed the trigger.

  Nicolas didn't really hear the explosion so much as feel it. He surged into motion, running with what little energy remained in him, diving into the river. The water felt good, and he thought for an ecstatic moment that everything would be well. He put all of his will into swimming. Then he saw the bridge, as he came up for air. Wreathed in black smoke, it still stood.

  Then he felt something like goats dancing on his back, and the water closed again over his head. As he sank, he wondered at the red shroud enfolding him, like the cloak of a cardinal.

  “He's dead,” Crecy said softly.

  Adrienne didn't even nod. She had no tears or grief left. Her body throbbed in time to the pulse in her arm. “You say that they didn't destroy the bridge?” she asked Crecy.

  “No. It stands.”

  “They will catch us in a few hours then?”

  “Much more quickly than that,” Crecy corrected.

  “Our driver will go on without us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then,” Adrienne said, “we should disembark, and let them chase an empty carriage for a time. We have traveled in the woods before, you and I.”

  “You aren't up to it. Your hand …”

  “I am not up to a hundred years in the Bastille either,” Adri enne replied.

  “I can make certain that neither of us suffers that fate,” Crecy promised.

  “No. I don't want to die. I have things to do.”

  Crecy's face was always hard to read, but Adrienne thought she saw a certain pride dawn on her features.

  “Very well,” she agreed. “We shall walk.”

  23.

  Cannon

  Clouds hung against the evening sky like the rotted tatters of a shroud on murky water. Ben gazed miserably at them.

  “How will it appear, I wonder?” Vasilisa asked, just a few feet down the rail from him.

  “Now you're the philosopher again, observing phenomena, rather than the tyrant,” he grunted. “I wonder how you shall feel about the deaths of a million people.”

  “Just as you will, Ben. For most of them I will feel only a sort of abstract horror. When I think of those whom I met and knew—” She raised her hands helplessly. “—I will pray or pretend that they were some of the lucky ones Mr. Heath and Voltaire managed to convince to flee. And I will miss London.”

  “We might have saved it.”

  “I do not think so,” Vasilisa replied. “In your heart, I know that you are grateful for my actions. You have been saved, and the moral burden was shouldered by someone else. You can pretend to yourself that you would have rather been there with Heath and Voltaire, trying your best till the end.”

  Ben had a sick spot in him that knew she was right.

  “It should be any time now,” Sir Isaac, his arm in a sling, said, coming up behind them. His eyes had a haunted quality, as if he had already seen something terrible.

  “Perhaps we won't see anything,” Vasilisa said. “We have, after all, put near three hundred miles between ourselves and London.”

  “Are we on deep waters then?” Sir Isaac asked abstractly, eyes fixed on the southern skies.

  “Passing deep,” Vasilisa answered.

  “That is well, I suppose,” Sir Isaac murmured.

  Ben noticed Vasilisa's puzzled frown, but though he didn't understand the great magus' statement, he had very little curiosity left.

  “How big did you say this rock was?” Robert asked. In many ways, he seemed most subdued of all.

  “A mile or so in diameter,” Sir Isaac replied. “Maybe more, maybe less.”

  “I should think we shan't see a thing,” said Robert.

  “No, I think we shall.”

  Stirling was on deck, hands and feet in chains, staring south with a grim intensity.

  “Will you enjoy it, Stirling?” Ben asked brusquely. “Will it give you joy?”

  “Not joy,” Stirling answered, “but satisfaction. Peace, perhaps.”

  “Your sickness is deeper than mine ever was,” Sir Isaac said, his voice almost inaudible, “and yet I am as much to blame. If I had not let myself slip away, I could have stopped this.”

  “How?”

  “I'm not certain. But God would not allow the creation of such a thing and not provide for its destruction as well.”

  Something high above caught Ben's attention.

  “There,” Vasilisa shouted.

  Far above the southern horizon was a kernel of brilliant light, brighter than any star Ben had ever seen. It moved slowly toward the horizon, passing behind a cloud.

  The cloud fluoresced, and quickly the light in the south flared. The comet itself appeared again, pipe-shaped. In a moment, it became so bright that it could not be looked at.

  Stirling was the only one to speak. His face was nearly argent in the unholy, bluish light.

  “Oh, God!” he said.

  Ben's hands trembled violently at the rail. When Vasilisa's hand found his, he gripped it without thinking.

  The new sun set.

  It rose again, fifty times as large, a dome of purest white, and all the south was white. Everyone around him was screaming as the scene rippled, and then suddenly the light was replaced by a black tower, rising without end, reaching for the darkening heavens.

  Louis XIV sat in the Hall of Mirrors, surrounded by his court. He wore the diamond- and emerald-crusted coat he had planned to be married in. The rest of his court was as splendid.

  His armchair rested on a dais, and his children sat or stood around him. In addition to them was Fatio de Duillier, his face grave and troubled.

  “When will it begin?” he asked de Duillier, switching his gaze from the London-facing windows of the Hall of Mirrors to the smaller glass that rested before him.

  “Very soon, Majesty, though I warn you, we may see little or nothing at this distance. You should keep your eye firmly on your mirror.”

  Louis quel
ched the frown that threatened. This was the moment, the moment when France would at last understand, when his court would love him again.

  A general gasp went up from the courtiers, then scattered applause.

  “What is it?”

  “The sky, Sire,” Fatio replied. “Do you see? I was wrong, it is visible.”

  Louis stared through the vast windows of the hall at the darkened sky. “I see nothing,” he snapped. But his court clearly did, for their astonished sounds continued to wax.

  You cannot see it because I cannot, the angel told him. Or, I should say, I see it but not in terms you would comprehend. I can only translate images that both of us have. You have no image for this.

  “Show me anyway,” Louis snapped petulantly.

  If you wish. But you should watch in the mirror instead. But at Your Majesty's insistence …

  Suddenly the sky changed. It became something more like a taste or a sensation than sight, and yet he could perceive a monstrous thing, a hole in the sky, a phantom's eye.

  “Stop! Stop!” he managed. The sky became again a flat pane across the heavens.

  “Sire?” Fatio and several others said at once.

  “Nothing!” he snapped, and then forced himself to relax. Act the king. Be the king. This must be his greatest performance, his finest moment.

  His breathing smoothed out, and then he noticed something new in his magic glass.

  London had begun to glow, the sunset shadows of its cathedrals washed away by light.

  Loud cheers and thunderous applause went up all around him.

  “What? What?” Louis asked.

  “The comet passed beyond the horizon, Majesty, but it was quite spectacular in the end. It lit up the entire sky like summer lightning.”

  I really can't see, Louis thought. I am blind.

  I have helped you as I could, the angel told him. I have helped you act the king, this one last time.

  “Last?” Louis whispered, suddenly afraid.

  When the comet strikes London, I shall have to depart from you for a time.

  “Why?”

  When you throw a pebble in a pond, it sends out ripples. The ripples the comet will send out affect angels of my sort so as to make us ill. I shall be forced to leave you. I only remain now so that you can see your triumph. I have grown attached to you, great king, and it amuses me to please you.