A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9)

by Fred Saberhagen

  * * *

  When the world had righted itself again, he approached the shelf and helped himself to another, closer look. He had needed only a second to realize that this must be the model made by Marie Grosholtz. Now he could appreciate her artistry.

  There was the white bandage, stuck on amid the short, dark hair which was indistinguishable from his own hair … because, Radcliffe realized with sudden insight, raising a hand to his scalp, it was his own, trimmed from his head in his prison cell by Marie herself on the day when she had made her plaster cast.

  Other details besides the bandage distinguished his simulacrum from all the others present in the room. The glassy eyes were half open, the coloring a muddy pallor. Shading on cheeks and chin suggested the growth of a few days’ beard.

  With an effort he put out a hand and seized the thing by its—no, by his own hair—and tilted it. The raw neck-surface now exposed was mottled red, and from it protruded narrow tubes of rubber, their ends stained brightly in the color of fresh blood.

  * * *

  Radcliffe was still pondering his discovery, when some subtle sound, a change in atmosphere, informed him that he was not alone.

  He turned to confront a figure, which was much more than a mere image, though it was standing as motionless as the surrounding shapes of wax and wood and cloth.

  Monsieur Legrand, smiling faintly, bowed to his young friend in silent greeting.

  Radcliffe felt a sudden surge of anger, born of the memory of terror and despair that could never be forgotten. “So, the sentence has been carried out, has it?” he blurted. “Perhaps you didn’t notice. I’ve been beheaded!” The young man spoke through his teeth in a strained voice.

  Legrand, blinking, seemed utterly taken aback. At last, his own anger stirred, he got out: “What is this idiocy?”

  The young man took half a step toward him. “Have you forgotten that I was taken to the guillotine? … My head has been…” Radcliffe’s hands flew through a sequence of shaky and elaborate gestures. Meanwhile he continued to glare at Legrand, as if daring him to confirm or disprove his claim. “The gypsy told me. She told me what you were going to do! To change me into a—a—” He struggled and failed to name the object of his scorn, but it was plain from his tone that the idea now aroused his disgust.

  * * * * * *

  Upset at what seemed to me a profound lack of gratitude, I glared back at him without sympathy, but rather with a full measure of contempt. “I shall tell you what has happened to your head: It has been filled with brandy and with nonsense!” After venting my annoyance in a string of oaths in antique languages, I seized him by the shirt-front and shook him—still rather gently.

  “You have not been decapitated. Nor have you yet been honored with induction into the illustrious ranks of the nosferatu—though I fear,” I added as I peered into his eyes, “that Constantia may have brought you rather closer to that goal than I intended. Yes, I see. Never mind, now I begin to understand. Where is she, by the way?” And I glared around angrily in search of my sometimes deranged assistant.

  “How in hell should I know?” Radcliffe stared at me. Then his voice began to break, with the relief of strain. “But I remember—the scaffold—”

  * * *

  When I thought about it, the way my client must have perceived the process of his rescue, I had to admit to myself that he really had been under a tremendous strain, that all the details of my plan had not been executed to perfection, and that he was perhaps entitled to some consideration on that account. I launched into a hasty explanation of the key points of the seeming miracle:

  “You remember that you stumbled and fell, even as you stepped up onto the platform?”

  “I… yes.” His hands were trembling now, and he was looking for a place to sit down.

  “You fell because you were tripped. You tumbled into one of the long baskets, which was practically concealed from the onlookers behind another basket whose lid stood open.”

  Radcliffe, who had found a stool, was listening, open-mouthed.

  The body that was lifted out of the basket, slammed on the plank, and bound in place, then shoved into the machine, was not yours. It was one of these!” And my open hand thumped one of the anonymous dummies standing nearby. To which this”—a long forefinger stabbed at the ghastly head on its low shelf—”had been attached.”

  At the museum, Marie and Melanie had done all the work on Radcliffe’s head with their own hands, pouring the molten wax into the plaster mold Marie had brought back from the prison. Then, knowing that the young man’s life depended on their skill, they had painstakingly attached some of Radcliffe’s own hair, inserted the glass eyes, and administered the final touches with shaping tools and paint. None of the other workers in the shop had questioned Marie’s orders or concerned themselves with her behavior. They were perfectly willing to take orders from the woman who was about to inherit—dare I say it?—the whole ball of wax.

  In the museum storeroom the young American was beginning to weep—tears were somewhat more common then— with the relief of strain. “But I felt someone pulling on my hair—lifting my head—”

  “You are confused,” I explained in a soothing voice. That was a little earlier, when I tripped you and threw you into the basket.”

  “You!”

  The intricate performance on the scaffold of course had required the secret cooperation of the whole crew of executioners who happened to be present on the platform.

  “But there were only two of us, as you undoubtedly remember.” I smiled modestly, proud of what I still considered a well-nigh perfect stratagem.

  “You—!” He repeated, staring at me.

  “Yes, of course I was one of them! You had not seen me in daylight before, and you certainly were not expecting to see me there, in that costume. Also I had allowed myself to age a couple of decades in as many days—we have that privilege, you know.”

  “And the other executioner?”

  “Oh, that was Citizen Sanson, right enough. One of them—a member of the younger generation, who have now completely taken over the family profession. One of them and one of us. Once Constantia and I hit on the proper sort of bribery, he proved quite susceptible—much easier to deal with than the elder head of the family would have been.”

  And in fact poor Gabriel Sanson had been quite madly in love with Constantia by that time, ready to risk everything for her, as poor foolish breathers so often are. Radu’s people, his spies, for all their cunning efforts, did not get wind of the great plot involving a key person in the matter of executions: the executioner himself.

  Methodically I provided my trembling client with more details of the deception. My vampiric strength had enabled me to handle the box containing his live, unconscious body as if it were empty. To prevent onlookers from noticing that Radcliffe’s “corpse” still had a head, that wicker box was transported with its contents directly to the cemetery rather than being dumped into a cart at the base of the guillotine, where its contents would have been exposed.

  The cart driver, who was partially in on the plot, had dumped Radcliffe’s body, still living and intact, in a place somewhat apart from that where he conveyed the quieter majority of his load.

  “I suppose you may have been starting to come round by the time they put you in the tumbril, or maybe even a little before that. My intention was to spare you that, but … I suppose Constantia failed to give you any clear explanation of our plan.”

  “You mean I’m not a … a…”

  I bowed to him slightly. “I trust you will survive the disappointment. You have not yet been honored with the opportunity to join the illustrious race of the nosferatu.”

  * * *

  The plan as designed had called for either Melanie or Marie to pick up the wax head in the cemetery, as well as seek out Radcliffe there, and, if he was in sufficient possession of his wits, give him his forged papers and some new clothes. But the panicky wagon driver, working in darkness, had dumped him
in the wrong place. Then Philip, on recovering his wits, had taken himself away, and Marie, arriving an hour or so late, unavoidably delayed, hadn’t been able to find him.

  * * *

  Radcliffe, listening in the storeroom, was not yet wholly satisfied. He kept feeling his neck, turning and nodding his head, as if he feared they might still somehow come apart. “But … there was blood spurting, gushing … I remember that.”

  “Your eyes were easily deceived; and so were my brother Radu’s, in glaring daylight and at a little distance. What you saw was not exactly blood. Just now when you were looking at your head, there on the shelf—no doubt you took notice of the tubes.”

  They had been fabricated from what was then called caoutchouc, an early form of industrial rubber. With such tubes and a couple of bladders inside the dummy, it had proven eminently possible to create the appropriate brief jets of “blood.”

  And of course the wax model of Radcliffe’s head had been provided with an internal cavity, filled with a liquid having much the appearance of fresh blood. So that when the executioner’s tall assistant lifted it out carefully, by the short dark hair, the red flow drained out visibly for the crowd to watch.

  “Real blood of course would have coagulated and changed color long before we were ready to use it. Coming up with a good substitute required some effort, but Constantia and I know something of the subject. We settled on the reddish juice of blood oranges, darkened with a little something else.”

  I thumped the wax head familiarly on the temple. “Now that this object has served its primary purpose, and perhaps after it is carried in some parade as an illustration of Revolutionary justice, there seems no reason why it should not go on display along with the others in the museum. Perhaps as the head of some minor anonymous figure in one of the groupings. But I believe Marie will want to do some retouching on it first. The tubes, of course, should go. They might make someone suspicious.”

  * * *

  Today, as on most days, the museum opened early in the morning, and already there were customers out in the public rooms. Radcliffe, listening to them from the storeroom, thought it plain that they took seriously their concerns about whether the wax effigies were really up-to-date and accurate. The political correctness of the display was of perhaps vital importance to the proprietors.

  “The day quickly grows bright, and it is time for me to seek a deeper shadow—where I can wait.” I looked about thoughtfully.

  Radcliffe was on the point of asking, but did not, just what his mentor was intending to wait for.

  Before dropping into obscurity, I reminded Radcliffe of the next step in the plan, and handed him some money and a set of beautifully forged identity papers; he was now Citizen Joseph Tallien, a native of Martinique. A wardrobe in the storeroom provided him with a change of clothes.

  The young man’s eyes grew wide as he looked at the money—gold coin, as well as Revolutionary assignats; the latter were almost worthless, but good Revolutionary patriots carried them about. For the purpose of bribes, the old gold coin was much preferred—even though possession of it was seriously illegal. Only precious stones were more readily accepted.

  “Sir, this is very generous.”

  “Tut tut.” I waved a hand dismissively. “I am not a poor man—and there is nowhere I would rather spend my money than in the game of discomfiting my brother. Now, you will find the lady you are seeking at Tom Paine’s house—or, if not there, at another house nearby, whose address I have jotted down. If you must go to that neighboring dwelling, ask for Citizen Gabriel Sanson.”

  “Gabriel—?” Radcliffe recoiled slightly. “You are joking!”

  “Not a bit. It should be obvious that our little show on the scaffold depended utterly on that young man’s cooperation.”

  “Will he be at home?”

  I shrugged, and squinted at the sun-bright window. “It seems more likely, at this hour, that he is at work.”

  * * *

  Several hours later, secure in his new identity and boldly asking directions of passersby as he entered the quiet suburban neighborhood, the American found himself standing before a neat little cottage on a quiet, tree-shaded street. There were no street signs near, no clamoring crowds, no walls screaming with inflammatory placards. Like the house where Paine was lodging, this anonymous dwelling stood amid its own fenced grounds.

  According to the dictates of the Committee, each place of residence in Paris, including houses and apartment buildings, was now supposed to have the names of all the inhabitants clearly posted on the door. But evidently this one was an exception.

  At the door a colorless servant said that Master … er… Citizen Gabriel was expected home early today. And yes, Citizen Gabriel was expecting Citizen Tallien to call. The servant led the visitor around the house to a quiet garden in the back.

  * * *

  This was the place where the elder Sanson still liked to tend his flowers, and now and then some vegetables as well. Plump geese in their separate enclosure greeted the strangers with a hospitable flurry of honking.

  And the venerable gentleman himself, patriarch of the clan of executioners, glad to see a visitor, put down his pruning shears and began to talk of gardening with Citizen Tallien.

  Time passed, pleasantly enough, except that Radcliffe was on tenterhooks waiting for Melanie to arrive. Where could she be? Of course there could be a hundred harmless causes of delay.

  When the man of the house arrived home from work, Philip could not help noticing that the new chief executioner’s clothing was quite clean—he must, of course, have changed somewhere before leaving the Place de la Revolution. His wife had his pipe and slippers waiting.

  * * *

  When they went indoors, the senior Sanson petted his dog, smiled at the cat, and invited his guest to choose between a brandy or a glass of wine, which his wife had waiting for him. Meanwhile the ormolu clock on the mantel ticked on, in a perfect image of bourgeois domesticity. Small children, the patriarch’s grandchildren, came running to rejoice that Papa had come home from work so early.

  Their mother chided the younger children for bothering Papa now, when he had a visitor; later on Papa would tell them a story.

  And Gabriel protested, in a way that seemed a matter of family ritual, that he knew no stories. But after making a brief excuse, he went off with his children anyway.

  * * *

  Old Sanson, puffing on his pipe, frowned slightly as he regarded Radcliffe, now seated in a chair opposite. “Citizen Tallien, was it in the course of business that you became acquainted with my son?”

  “Yes sir. In a manner of speaking it was.”

  “Ah. Then in Martinique, you are—?”

  Radcliffe did his best to think fast. “I have a connection with the authorities there, sir. With the system of justice. Though mine is not precisely the same profession that you share with your sons.” After a pause he added hastily: “And which is an admirable profession indeed.”

  The old man nodded. Suddenly he looked grim. “Though some will dispute the fact. Of course it is a great benefit to society.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Have you seen my machine in operation?” Then, before Radcliffe was compelled to find an answer, he pressed on: “A vast improvement over the old ways! In the old days, at best, the sword—and with the sword, even if the victim did not resist, even if he was perfectly composed, the executioner had to be very skillful, with steady nerves and hand. Otherwise— dangerous accidents!” Old Sanson shook his head and puffed his pipe, evidently recalling some examples.

  “Yes,” said Radcliffe. “I’m sure the new way is much better.”

  “The sword quickly grows dull; it has to be sharpened and whetted often. If there are several to be executed on the same day…” Again the patriarch shook his head and muttered darkly. “The guillotine is much better—I see the newspapers have begun to call it the guillotine now.”

  “So I have heard.”

  The ol
d man’s old wife came bustling by, testing furniture to see how well the maid had dusted. “Papa, Papa, the young people don’t want to hear about such things.”

  “Nonsense, of course they do. The young man here is in almost the same business. Besides, everyone should hear them.”

  People in this respectable if somewhat isolated household were looking askance at Radcliffe’s clothing. Only the coat he had taken at the wax museum made him look at all respectable; his other garments still bore noticeable traces of the scaffold and the grave. Well, these days poor clothes could be taken as a sign of Revolutionary fervor.

  Gabriel came back into the room, having finished for the time being playing with his children.

  Old Sanson looked at him from under heavy brows. “What is this, Gabriel, that I hear about a wooden blade?”

  The young man blinked. “Yes, father?”

  “Someone told me that yesterday you used a wooden blade in the machine. Well, never mind it now—but when you have finished with your guest, I want to talk to you about it.”

  “Certainly, father. We were trying a little experiment. The idea is to prevent rust.”

  “Citizen Tallien,” said the young maid from the doorway. “Your wife is here.” And it was at that point that Melanie came in, well-dressed and looking radiant.

  * * *

  At the end of the 18th century, coffee was still something of a novelty in Europe; Gabriel Sanson’s wife was soon offering some to her visitors.

  “Have you ever tried coffee, citizens? It is all the latest thing.”

  “I have heard that it is also Citizen Robespierre’s favorite drink by far.” But then, despite the hopes of Citizeness Sanson, the Incorruptible had never come to call on the executioner.