Doubtless, Radu mused, Paris now produced too many headless ones for any one cemetery to accommodate.
His companion was becoming unreasonably excited. “I tell you, prince, there have been eighteen hundred executions under my window in the last thirty-five days. A third of them have been taken from this very building!”
“Eighteen hundred!” That really seemed an excessive estimate to Radu; he reminded himself that he was, after all, talking to a certified madman. Of course there might really be some auxiliary mechanique somewhere in the neighborhood. They were scattered all over France, after all.
Radu had not observed any such facility on his way in, or scented any nearby tract of blood-soaked earth. Now he went to the window and looked out, seeing only a garden. He concluded that his old associate was very likely genuinely deranged.
Meanwhile de Sade had let his outrage slide away and begun fantasizing about the young nuns who must have occupied this room before the Revolution.
“How many novices do you suppose slept in this little chamber?” Actually the room was generously sized indeed, compared to the vast majority of the prison cells Radu had seen. Sade seemed totally caught up in his speculations. “Three or four, at the very least. Maybe five or six. Do you suppose that it was necessary for them to share beds?”
Radu shook his head. “I too have slept in convents from time to time; but none of them were organized in any such fashion as that. But do go on. There is no reason why you should give up your daydreams.”
“Daydreams, are they? Only daydreams?” De Sade’s eyes flashed. “I should think that maintaining discipline in a convent would be one of the chief concerns of the authorities in charge.”
“No doubt. You might have done well, I should think, as Mother Superior.”
“Why do you say that? Women are more inclined to cruelty than we men are, and that is because they have a more delicate nervous system.”
Suddenly the man sat back on his haunches and bellowed, a long, quavering note. Perhaps he thinks he is a werewolf now, thought his visitor, intrigued.
Then the crouching figure shouted: “Hear me, world! It is the Marquis de Sade, cavalry colonel, who is being subjected to such abominable treatment! Deprived of air and light! Rally round, my friends! To rescue me will be in the interest of all!”
Then abruptly de Sade fell silent, and went back to staring at his wax dolls on the table.
Already Radu was bored by the little figures. He picked one up, the blond girl-doll he thought the madman had been particularly admiring, and crushed it in his hand, reducing it to a smear of pink wax oozing between his fingers. De Sade made a sound like that of a victim under some probing stab by a torturer. Radu could derive faint amusement from the expression on de Sade’s face.
Chapter Nineteen
Hoping to discover the whereabouts of the newly arrested Radcliffe as quickly as possible, I stood before a Parisian wall which had been dedicated to the posting of Revolutionary news.
I had thought there might be a good chance of finding the name I sought on some freshly published list of those under arrest for crimes against the people—or under sentence of death, which now very nearly amounted to the same thing. But nothing on the board before me suggested that such lists were currently being displayed—if they ever had been. With the daily number of executions in Paris alone now in double digits and mounting steadily higher, perhaps the people in charge of the paperwork of terror were finding it increasingly difficult to keep up.
My weary gaze focused upon one of the placards on the wall. It was actually only one of a number of authoritarian proclamations, some of the older specimens overlapped and almost entirely covered by the new. Though they dealt with different subjects, all were similar in tone:
A portion of the treacherous suspects being held in our prisons have been eliminated by the people, vigilant in the cause of freedom; and it is certain that the entire nation, driven to desperate measures by continuous conspiracies, will be inspired to pursue the same course. All will cry out with one voice: Our soldiers who go to fight the enemy must be secure in the knowledge that they do not leave thieves and murderers behind them, to prey upon their helpless wives and children.
It was signed by Marat and others. The cardboard was severely weatherworn in places, a reminder that Marat had been assassinated almost a year ago, a long time indeed when one was measuring the pace of Revolutionary events. Many of the other signatures were illegible.
I felt a chill of foreboding on behalf of Radcliffe—and for my vow that I would save his life. I would have to act with dispatch to free my benefactor, who might well face not only the threat of la mechanique, but the less predictable chance of another wave of prisoner-slaughtering by mobs.
But of course my first step must be to learn exactly where the unlucky wretch was being held. There were more than a dozen prisons now in the metropolitan area of Paris, with new ones being improvised, as it seemed, almost daily, and prisoners sometimes shuttled from one to another. I might conceivably search for days without finding the man I sought.
* * *
It was one of those times when the demands of honor grip a man like a migraine headache, an undeserved punishment from which there can be no escape. I had as yet no evidence that Radu was out to frustrate my purpose, or even that he was aware of Radcliffe’s arrest or of my commitment to the American’s welfare. But where Radu is concerned it is always wisest to assume the worst.
Several hours passed before I saw the silver lining of the cloud: It dawned on me that I might be able to use Radcliffe as bait to trap Radu.
* * * * * *
I had tried several methods, including hypnosis, of interrogating Old Jules. But even so the willing and faithful servant could do little more than blubber helplessly. I could not extract from him information which was not in his possession. He had no idea to which prison his newly adopted Citizen Master had been taken.
It began to look as if I might be forced to look through all of the rapidly proliferating Parisian prisons cell by cell, a procedure which would take days, days my client probably could not spare. Unless I could find some shortcut, magical or otherwise. I might have attempted some variety of sorcery, had I had in my possession anything—a piece of clothing, a lock of hair—which had been in close personal contact with Philip. But nothing of the kind was available.
My thoughts next turned to the young woman, Melanie Romain, who obviously had some fairly close relationship with the man I was determined to protect. I did not really believe that they were simply old friends, as she had claimed. And now I regretted my carelessness in failing to find out more about her when I had had the chance.
I thought about her. About Melanie Romain, the practical, kindly doctor’s daughter, whose mysterious job required her to work in a churchyard in the dead of night, briskly doing inexplicable things with freshly decapitated heads. She had told me that the older woman who shared her midnight labors was her teacher, Marie Grosholtz … but her teacher in what craft or art?
Of one thing I was certain, having had my knowledge confirmed by Old Jules: Melanie had accompanied Radcliffe to Paris. And the elderly servant, after their party had reached the city, had heard Melanie give the young man the same Parisian address I had happened to overhear— Number 20, Boulevard du Temple.
Well, the key to what success I enjoy usually lies in instincts and hunches, not in logic. It is somewhere away from the paths of science and reason that I will find my salvation, if I ever do. I might have taken other pathways to attempt to locate my savior in his own hour of need; but somehow this one beckoned.
* * *
Looking for the address, I made my way on foot at dusk along the tree-lined boulevard, passing the building which had housed the once-famous English circus, now shuttered and apparently fallen on hard times. A number of theaters were in the same neighborhood.
The establishment I was seeking turned out to be a large house, three stories high, with a covered p
orch in front. The building fronted closely on the street but possessed spacious grounds in the rear. On the front of the house a sign, large and brightly painted but with a certain dignity, announced an enterprise headed by Dr. Curtius: a wax museum.
And at last, belatedly, comprehension came.
* * *
Not wishing particularly to be observed, since it was by then after public viewing hours at the Cabinet du Cire, I entered the grounds at the rear. The habitation effect proved too weak to prevent my uninvited entrance to the museum portion of the building, though no doubt the actual living quarters would have been denied me.
Moments later, rummaging about at random, I found myself inside a locked and otherwise deserted storeroom. Here light was almost nonexistent, yet for my eyes quite adequate.
There I paused, marveling. I had thought that, after three hundred years of life, there was no longer much in the world that could surprise me. But I had been wrong.
Of course, after only a moment’s shock, I understood what the figures were. But still they were surprising. The lopped-off heads of Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were looking at me from a shelf. Some eyeblink fraction of a second passed before I was entirely sure that they were only wax, glass-eyed and painted with great realism.
The modeled heads of royalty, in keeping with the times, were stored in an inconspicuous position on a low shelf. Other celebrities of the past, great and small, were stacked until their time should come again; and the elaborate costumes usually worn by many of these figures had, as I discovered later, been folded away and locked in trunks. A few were stored hanging up, and thus were easier to see. The most popular feature of the museum, to judge by the amount of space allotted, in notices and on the floor, was the Caverne des Grands Voleurs, a display of images of executed criminals.
* * *
A great many visitors of all kinds came through the museum every day that it was open. It was evidently nothing unusual for some of the customers to wander into the adjoining work areas and semidetached living quarters. None of the residents or workers were particularly surprised this early in the evening, so soon after closing time, to see a stranger poking about in their midst.
Politely I enquired of several workers for Melanie Romain, but for my trouble received only shrugs and thoughtful looks conveying cautious ignorance.
Attracted by a peculiar, small, mechanical noise issuing from a kind of workyard behind the house, I turned my steps in that direction. A moment later my eye fell upon the small form of a ten-year-old boy, raggedly clad in appropriate Revolutionary style, who was sitting by himself in a small veranda just outside the main building. I noted at once that the lad’s features displayed an arresting resemblance to those of the woman I was trying to find. The likeness was so definite that I felt sure at once it was not accidental.
Casually I strolled in his direction, and observed what he was playing with. Or perhaps I should say, more accurately, what he was working on.
In the small model machine there lay a small wax doll, clumsily made from scraps by his own childish fingers, standing by in an attitude of sturdy indifference, ready to be beheaded. Whatever the lad’s talents were to be in life, I thought, sculpture did not seem to be among them.
“What is your name, my lad?”
“Auguste.” He was a dark and brooding child, evidently quite at home in this place.
Accustomed as I was to observing human faces change with age, and to observing several generations of a family in sequence, it was no great feat for me to convince myself beyond a doubt that small Auguste was a blood relative of Melanie Remain. My next thought was to consider whether this was likely to be her son. The age difference between them seemed not too small to make the relationship impossible.
“That seems an interesting game that you are playing.”
He looked at me doubtfully—an enigmatic, dark-haired child with a pinched and gnome-like face, who as I later learned was not allowed to go to the cemetery with his mother, but spent most of his time at the museum engaged in building a toy guillotine out of some scraps of wood and a few bits of hardware.
I made my tone more businesslike. “Is your mother here, my lad?”
“I will see, citizen,” the boy answered, politely enough, and got to his feet. “Who shall I say is looking for her?”
“Tell her her most recent patient is now quite restored to health; but even so, he wishes a consultation … never mind, tell her: Citizen Legrand.”
Auguste gave me a strange look at that, then put aside his toy guillotine and arose to go and look for his mother.
As soon as he was gone, I picked up the toy and examined it. Ingenious, though not technically sophisticated. When the trigger was pulled, a brick fell on the poised blade, adapted from a broken pocketknife, giving it impetus enough to slice the neck of a tiny animal clean through. Maybe, I thought, a powerful spring would work better than a heavy weight, but such hardware would not be commonly available to children.
My brother, I thought, would be delighted to see this.
* * * * * *
I waited patiently, and little Auguste was back in a minute or two. “Citizen, they tell me that her work has taken her to the cemetery this evening.”
“Thank you, my lad—I know which one.”
* * *
In the cemetery, many of the circumstances of our first meeting two years ago were now repeated, with minor variations. The trench, and the burial mound that marked where the trench had been, had moved on for a considerable serpentine distance. Again Melanie and her cousin Marie were at the raw end of this mound, where the latest burials were to be found. And they were hard at work, but now equipped with a smaller, better focused version of the Argand lamp.
When I came upon them, Melanie was absorbed in the grisly task of looking for one particular head, while Marie held another in her lap, painstakingly coating the features with wet plaster. Now that I understood the point of the work, it seemed almost commonplace. The actual pouring of the wax, and the many remaining steps in creating the replica which was the object of all this labor, would of course take place back at Curtius’s workshop, behind the museum.
Tonight the rats seemed bigger and bolder, more willing to interfere, than they had been on the occasion of my last visit.
The women took turns in interrupting their work, to try to drive away the annoying and dangerous rats by throwing pebbles. But mostly the beasts—arrogantly well-fed, confident clients of the Revolutionary state—ignored the ineffective bombardment and continued to pursue their own agenda.
With a slight bow and a polite murmur, I did the ladies a favor, or at least saved them some time, by driving off a whole swarm of the rodents with a great silent shout.
“I think they will not bother you for a while.”
In response the two women gave me a strange look.
I wondered, aloud, if they ever had trouble finding the head they had been sent to model, and decide to use a substitute instead? They could at least hope that no one would be able to tell the difference. If so, they would not confess the dereliction to me now, but only laughed at the idea.
* * *
To Melanie I said: Your son told me where I could find you.”
She paused in her work, and looked vaguely alarmed.
I hastened to be reassuring. “Pray do not be concerned; he was quite safe when I saw him, at the museum. He seemed a charming lad.”
“Thank you, m’sieu.”
“Who is his father? Excuse me, you may be sure that I do not ask such a question out of idle curiosity.”
“Then why do you ask it, sir?” Marie Grosholtz demanded.
Melanie shot her cousin an anguished look. “Oh, what does it matter now? The gentleman is a friend of Philip’s, and has his reasons, I am sure.”
While Marie, who had known about her cousin’s troubles for ten years and more, looked on sympathetically, Melanie told me the story of how she had given birth to this child abou
t ten years ago, a few months after the kindly (in this instance, anyway) Dr. Curtius, at the urging of his niece Marie, had taken in a pregnant fourteen-year-old, and set her to work at easy tasks in his establishment.
The father of Melanie’s baby was, or rather had been, a careless aristocratic youth named Charles Dupin, the scion of a well-to-do family, who at first had declined to acknowledge his paternity of the child. Later, she thought, he might have been inclined to do so, but before he had taken any definite steps in that direction he had allied himself with the wrong political faction and been beheaded.
“I had thought it possible,” I observed, “that young Auguste’s father was Philip Radcliffe.”
“No.”
Her fists clenched, and she stared at me. “Oh God, do you bring me any news of Philip?”
I shook my head and gestured soothingly. “All I know with certainty is that he has been arrested. I was hoping you could tell me in what prison he can be found.”
“He is in La Conciergerie. We have been able to find out that much.”
“Ah. That gives me a place to start. He is a foreigner, and I think that will give us a few days’ grace at least, before they turn him over to Sanson.”
* * *
Meanwhile, Marie worked on steadily, wiping dried blood and bits of bran from her subject’s face. The baskets on Sanson’s platform usually contained four or five inches of either bran or sawdust, intended to absorb blood. Having cleaned her subject as well as was practical, she then smeared it with a mixture of Linseed oil and lead oxide, in preparation for the plaster of Paris, which when dry would make the mold.
With the rats held in abeyance for the time being, the three of us were soon chatting with something like a natural freedom. When I asked the two women why they had chosen this spot to do this work, they were ready with a simple explanation. If an impression of the face was made at graveside, there was no need to carry the head away. It could be tossed back into the pit.
A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) Page 21
