The Heads That Rolled

by Lucille Moncrief

  The ermine narrowed his beady, black eyes in the shadows of the night. He vowed to unseat Robespierre’s coveted spot in Callista’s machinations. Perhaps, the ermine surmised, he could formulate an unsettling scheme, and set the avaricious guillotine’s razors upon Robespierre’s thin neck before the revolution was finished. The ermine licked his chops and turned his attention back to the high priestess and her rather corruptible, and inadequate, thrall.

  “I cannot bear it any longer,” Robespierre muttered, tear-soaked, into Callista’s skirts.

  Callista smirked. “I need one more, only one more sacrifice from you, Maxime,” she said, tapping his shoulder with a manicured nail.

  The greedy look in her spinning eyes, and the way her fingers began to curl around the strand of his powdered wig were as unnatural as a dancing bear. Entertaining, perhaps even cute, was the dancing bear. But its barred fangs, sharp claws, and guttural roar belied something of a different and more ravenous nature.

  The ermine’s ear swiveled, discerning her horrible lie as she played with the fake hair of a broken man.

  Robespierre looked up at her, and her face immediately changed from an expression of greed to one of sympathy. The ermine felt his inner man scoff at her transparent display.

  Robespierre pleaded. “Only one? And then—”

  “Yes, Maxime. One more and then your precious, infant nation shall be safe.” She grinned and stood from the bench.

  She smoothed down her skirts with a frown, before smiling at him, still on his knees. His glasses were fogged, and his nose has turned a florid shade.

  “My dear Maxime, your work has been indelible for human progress. And the sacrifices you have made.” She turned and knelt beside the fountain. Her hand touched the fetid, still water’s surface. The fountain bubbled to life with clear, pristine water, and the plants unfurled and swelled to a vibrant, kelly green.

  Robespierre sniffled. His eyes widened behind his spectacles as his jaw dropped.

  “This,” Callista said, “will be your nation. Rebirthed and clear of corruption, once the final wave of blood cleanses it.” She stood.

  The ermine’s white whiskers flicked.

  “I must have your dearest friend,” Callista continued.

  Robespierre eyed her with his forehead crinkling, and he tensed like an unarmed man about to receive a heavy blow.

  “Desmoulins and his wife.” Callista folded her hands in front of her, pious-like.

  The ermine could hear Robespierre’s heart breaking in twain. It was like hoped dashed—dissonant and heavy. He reveled in the sound of heartbreak, and a drop of saliva fell from his open, panting mouth.

  Robespierre clenched his jaw. A hem and a haw seemed to catch in his throat as he stood, pacing in a small circle a few times.

  Callista watched him as still as ice. Only her eyes moved—a quiver full of arrows.

  Robespierre made a fist, still pacing, and brought his knuckles to his mouth, as if immersed deep in thought. His voice took on a hard, clipped, and frantic edge. “You say just one more, and it is finished?”

  “Yes.” Callista nodded, still regarding him.

  His shadow danced in the candlelight, bouncing off the reflection in her eyes.

  “And the nation will be protected?”

  Callista grinned, nodding more. “From enemies . . .” She looked a bit lost. “How does the fledgling American nation put it?” she whispered, putting her forefinger to her bottom lip before speaking with confidence, “from enemies both foreign and domestic.” She grinned, and the mirth which flavored the timbre of her voice became reflected in the glint of her eyes.

  Amethyst, Cerulean? The ermine couldn’t be sure of their colour, and he guessed that perhaps they were only a dishwater grey.

  Robespierre stopped and stared at her with an open mouth. He dropped his clenched fist.

  Callista laughed. She clapped her hands together, bringing the tips of her steepled fingers beneath her chin. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, Maxime, you should see your face. I had nothing to do with that. I’m not behind every armed conflict between nations, you know.” She shook her head slowly, her eyes half closed.

  Robespierre’s face fell, and he looked like a man who hadn’t slept in weeks. “Of course.” He looked down at his feet to the rough, uneven cobblestones.

  The ermine crouched low to the ground. How unsurprising, that The Incorruptible would have collected such innumerous, nationwide blood sacrifices for his simple-headed ideology. The ermine tried his best not to laugh, for it would have been a keening, chittering sound, and drawn their suspicions. And now, the ermine thought, clenching his jaws to keep from laughing, that stupid Robespierre had the gall to feel weary of the bloodshed! The ermine dug his claws into the dirt beneath the iris leaves as his tiny frame shook with glee and a healthy dose of schadenfreude.

  “Attend me, Maxime,” Callista said with a sweep of her arm. They walked together around the fountain, The Incorruptible beneath her arm, cradled to her flank like a darling child. He cringed, his shoulders bunched up nearly to his earlobes, yet he allowed her such an intimate gesture.

  Jealousy struck the ermine deep within his furry breast. That pinheaded idiot knew nothing of the stakes. His stupid ideology, his childish notion of human equality, lodged within the dirt of a nation so small upon the planet, was only a festering wound for which Callista Tromperie could prod and goad to her bidding.

  Lucius Marquis, the ermine, knew her true intentions well. She needed blood, and copious buckets of it, to fill the portal, open it, and let the Nephilim reign once more. She cared not for the hope and the safety of an infant nation. Lucius wanted ever so terribly to have a part in her play, a leading role that he so deserved for his timeless devotion to her as her vampire familiar. The ermine gulped, turning his head a degree.

  Callista and Robespierre were gone, disappeared into the depths of the cabinetmaker’s property, where the shadows eclipsed the shrinking tallow candles.

  The ermine lifted his head. A feeling of exhilarating dread struck deep within his bones. Robespierre would amplify The Terror, expand the already overreaching powers of the fledgling and paranoid state and catch Callista’s intended prey within her avaricious net. A lingering, human sense of care and responsibility tugged at the dark pit of the ermine’s soul. He rushed from beneath the iris fronds and into the streets of a city on fire.

  The narrow, crooked alleyway wound through the city like a serpentine vein, and the ermine’s tail swished over the tops of the cobblestones, picking up all manner of debris: bits of vegetables from the morning market, hay, droppings from the horse carts, and best of all to the ermine, the blood of the sacrificed.

  Somewhere in the darkness, the cart from only a few moments before, clattered away, painting the alley in streaks of vibrant, sticky red. The cart was stuffed-full of beheaded bodies. The ermine licked his chops and reveled in the effluvium the cart had left behind. His paws became blood-soaked, his undercarriage and tail flecked with the remnants of murder, mayhem, and filth. He stopped to lick the blood from the top of a protruding stone, his pulse aflutter, before hurrying on his way, soon reaching the banks of the Seine.

  The rank smell of the tanneries near Montmartre, the empty fish market, and the overflowing Cimetiere des Innocents, laced with lime, assailed his senses with rank decay. The loose, rough wheels of the cart came to a stop somewhere downstream in the darkness, and a few muffled words were exchanged. A splash, a quick prayer, and the black river swallowed the bodies. The cart clattered away again, back to the Place de Revolution, it’s gaping maw opened wide for the next day’s sacrifices.

  The ermine, his eyes aglow in crystal blue, watched the heads float downstream from atop a small hill of dirt and dung. Torches glowed on the opposite bank, and he waited until the first tiny rays of sunlight began to peak through the filmy clouds. He had only an hour before the sun would put him to sleep. He tore off to the west, jumping this way and that, enthralled in his mad dance, to the
home of the aristocrat Therese Hortense Bellinger.

  He took a deep breath of the awakening, wounded city. The ovens in the bakeries were heating up, reaching to full capacity, and filling the air with the balmy scent of fresh-baked pastries and loaves of bread. Dour, shaggy, grey mules pulled the coffee carts which steamed in the open air, brewing tar-black demitasse. An infant cried, and its squall bounced over the labyrinthine walls. Skirts rustled, and footsteps clomped as the inhabitants from the lower working classes and laborers began the breaking day in earnest, their clothes rumpled, threadbare and stained. Anyone who wanted to stay alive bore the tricolour upon his hat.

  The ermine kept low and close to the walls.

  Visions of Mademoiselle Bellinger filled the ermine’s furry, strange head as a shutter banged against the stucco walls of a third-floor apartment. His muscles began to liquify as the dawn broke, and he longed to lay his head upon the loose leaves of cabbage and vegetable stalks littering the alleyway. As his eyelids fluttered, a vision of Mademoiselle Bellinger’s tawny hair flashed in his mind.

  He remembered the way it fell from beneath her cap as she bent over her writing desk with her lips pursed, tugging at odd directions and her eyes eagle-focused on the parchment as she scratched away the invitations.

  Invitations . . . the ermine thought as his whiskers trembled from his shuddering exhalation.

  A man’s dirty clog overstepped his head. He skittered away, dashing through the streets, then underneath the mud-caked petticoat of the fishmonger’s wife. Mademoiselle’s home was not far.

  As the ermine slid beneath a cart of fresh apples, tucked away in the straw like jewels, he remembered the invitations, one in particular that he’d received years ago in Mademoiselle’s looping scrawl. The parchment had smelled of her rose perfume. It had been an invitation to her salon.

  The ermine, in his undead form as Lucius Tristan Marquis, had obliged her and taken stock of the revolutionary minds Mademoiselle had so skillfully curated and entertained. Mademoiselle Bellinger, despite her gentle upbringing, had been one of the most rabid revolutionary agitators in Paris. Her discretion and her enthusiasm had been unmatched. She’d managed to whip up revolutionary fervor with her carefully curated list of revolutionary brethren, and she held their court like the best of the late royals. And yet, she still managed to work her way between both rival political factions slyly and had been the discrete, sought-after conduit between the fanatical, nascent Jacobins and the more moderate Girondins. Not to mention, Mademoiselle Bellinger, despite the political uprisings, had maintained her advantageous ties to the trembling, but moneyed bourgeois.

  Her uncanny ability to control and command such fervent, opposing factions in these dangerous times had set Lucius Marquis on fire. She was a master puppeteer. He wanted her for himself—for eternity. And they would rule together with silver tongues. Or at least, that’s what fantasy Lucius had so foolishly allowed himself to entertain until he caught sight of Mademoiselle Bellinger with the draper of Montmartre’s son.

  The Terror had forced the salon to shutter its doors several months ago. But, Therese had continued to work for the agitator class, albeit more discreetly. The ermine wasn’t sure if the salon’s closure was a fortuitous turn of events or not, for he couldn’t keep as good of an eye on the unnerving Sebastien Benoit Quartermayns, the draper’s son. The man’s grave, blue eyes so uneased the ermine.

  Quartermayns fancied himself a revolutionary reporter, armed with pen and grit, and cloaked in the foolhardiness of youth. He so greatly irritated Lucius Marquis. Although Lucius was enamoured with Therese Bellinger’s deceit, he longed for her to divert her attention elsewhere—to him—and away from the draper’s son and the revolution which bound them together.

  Lucius had kept a fearful watch over Sebastien, that man with his eyes the same, bizarre shade as the deepest parts of the ocean. What monster lurked within their depths? The ermine had suspected it but feared to utter the name—dhamphyr.

  The ermine shook his furry head in the shadow of a worn stoop, and skittered over it, making his way across the rue de Franciade. The smell of braising meat laced the air, for the servants were already preparing the noon meal even before the sun began to fill the eastern horizon. Lace hung in the shoppes, gossamer as spider webs. The shadows in the street started their descent. The ermine wondered what dark country they retreated to as the day broke, with high noon as their guillotine.

  Quartermayns could not have been a dhamphyr, the ermine surmised, although the whisper of doubt needled him beneath his tender ribs. Quartermayns was far too old not to have reached his awakening. And besides, the ermine had done his due diligence—Quartermayns’ mother still lived. Nonetheless, the ermine was somewhat relieved to not be in the company of the Quartermayns any longer. The ermine shuddered across the uneven cobblestones as he remembered the Quartermayns' gaze, regarding him like a defenseless stag locked within the sights of a flintlock pistol.

  He stopped and stood on hind legs across the street from Mademoiselle’s home—423 rue de Franciade. Smoke poured from the chimneys, staining the brightening sky in snaking smudges like dirty fingerprints. A rooster’s cry rang out over the clamoring streets.

  Once The Terror had commenced, all church bells had ceased, replaced with the simple, organic din of the early morning. There was no order, no meticulous harmony to cling to the pungent air in resonant notes. The ermine waited, regarding the foot traffic.

  A girl in black rags stood to the right of him with a basket on her arm, selling pitted apples, two for a sou. Her throat was flecked with mud, but the skin beneath glowed with youth in the rising sun and waning light of the tallow candles.

  His stomach rumbled, and his eyes began to spin and turn red at the thought of having a sip of the tender mademoiselle, Therese Hortense Bellinger’s, neck, with her tawny hair teasing his nose—after he warned her of Robespierre’s machinations, of course. Lucius could feel the heightening of the bloodshed in his predatory bones. His brazen, foolishly cavalier Therese would do well to heed his dire warnings. He feared she was still writing those damn pamphlets along with Sebastien Quartermayns.

  The sun began to rise as Lucius recalled the ink staining her hands several weeks ago when her salon had been forcibly closed. He’d enquired about it as he traced the outline of the bottle-green vein in her wrist with a gentle forefinger, to the black stains on the pad of her thumb. Therese had told him with a glint in her hazel eyes and a lilt to her voice that she and the Quartermayns had been sending correspondences to members of the salon, letters unsympathetic to the fledgling Jacobin government.

  At the time, Lucius had shuddered to think of her delicate neck severed. She’d ripped her hand from his grasp, terrified of his red, spinning eyes. With a softened voice, he’d hynotised her, there in her darkened parlor against the backdrop of emerald and gold tapestries, to never write such inflammatory musings again.

  Lucius the ermine yawned in the pale morning rays. He would have his breakfast, and slumber within the dark confines of Mademoiselle Bellinger’s whitewashed cellar, while the sounds of the servants above weaved themselves throughout his dreams. Cutlery would clatter, slippers would whisper across the floorboards, and dogs would bark, and horses nicker amongst the clattering wheels of the street carts beyond the cellar’s dampened walls.

  The emerald green door of 423 rue de Franciade opened. The ermine’s ears pricked, and his whiskers flickered as his crystal-blue eyes widened.

  Sebastien Benoit Quartermayns stepped outside with the Mademoiselle’s hand in his. The ermine fell to all-fours. His breath ceased at the sight of Mademoiselle’s hand in Sebastien’s, and a bomb went off inside the ermine’s skull.

  Quartermayns said something unintelligible, but the timbre of his deep voice rumbled within the ermine’s breast, and his teeth began to grow, as did his body. Mademoiselle’s laugh echoed across the rue de Franciade. The ermine bit his tongue, halting his transformation. His bones snapped, groaning and protest
ing against their confinement. With beady eyes, the ermine continued to watch his Mademoiselle and the interloper converse down the awakening street.

  Quartermayns’ tricolour shone bright and freshly starched upon his three-cornered, black hat, and he gripped the brass head of his walking stick. He led the mademoiselle down the east end of the rue de Franciade, towering over her in a garnet-red redingote.

  Fear struck the ermine. A black aura now pulsated around the Quartermayns. The ermine had only seen such a thing once before, during the Harrying of the North, some seven hundred years ago.

  He and a band of marauders had been locked in combat on a late-night raid. They’d pushed into starving York, where the people were nothing but terrible wretches clad in rags, and dirty and thin as rushes. Those ghosts of Yorkshire had been easy to overpower. All but one; a young boy.

  Lucius had happened upon him in a round, thatched hut, crouching over a woman who appeared to be his mother. Her neck had been torn in two, and the boy’s mouth had been sticky, like crushed berries—unnatural. The wind had howled, shaking against the rough-hewn walls as the blue, vampiric blood within the Ermine’s veins froze hard as plaster. But what had so frightened Lucius, broadsword gripped tight in his hand, was the look upon the mother’s dead face. It was the look of expectation.

  The boy’s flesh changed from ghostly white to an angry red, ravenous wanting, and a black miasma had appeared around his person, curling outwards and upwards like a fist outstretching, ready to grab Lucius and crush him. Terrified, Lucius dropped his broadsword and dashed from the hut. A primordial stirring, a scream of abject danger had filled his dead soul as he fled across the moor.