A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (book suggestions TXT) 📕

      Another man, eager and excited, broke into the conversation, challenging Saint-Just on the definition of a republic, and Radcliffe caught his reply: That which constitutes a republic is the destruction of everything that opposes it!”

      Meanwhile Melanie was doing her best to plead for her father, both with Saint-Just and his more powerful companion. She reminded them how Dr. Romain had always treated the poor in his district, whether or not they were able to pay.

      The leaders looked momentarily sympathetic, but could not have been much impressed, because they promised nothing and offered no hope. Their response was restricted to a few more platitudes of Revolutionary morality.

      “One moment.” The Angel was holding up a pale hand. “I have seen that name…” Turning aside, he scattered papers on a table, then held up the one he had been looking for. “I am sorry to tell you, citizeness, that Citizen Romain, your father, deserved the full penalty for his crimes—and he paid that penalty this morning.”

* * *

      Five minutes later, when he and his disconsolate companion were back outside, Philip was muttering between clenched teeth: “I wanted to hit that man. I very nearly did.”

      Melanie, the tough young woman, had come near fainting at the news so brutally delivered, and Philip had to support her to the door. Her father’s body—in two pieces—would now be in one of those anonymous mass graves inside the cemetery of the Church of the Madeleine…

      Radcliffe embraced her like a brother, did what he could to comfort her. The scoundrels! I am so sorry…” People walking in the street turned their heads toward him when his words fell clearly in the air. Well, he didn’t care.

      In an effort to divert her even slightly from the raw fact of death, he commented: “And so that is the famous Robespierre. He seems to make no effort to avoid dressing like an aristocrat … or behaving like one, either. I had no idea you knew the man.”

      “I have been present at a dinner or two where he was entertained, that’s all.” Melanie wiped her eyes. “But I don’t suppose it would make any difference if I, or my father, had saved his life. Oh, Philip, it is horrible to think … of the grave.”

      “Of course it is.”

      “You will tell me my father died by accident? That someone was in a hurry and made a mistake?”

      “No, I won’t try to tell you that. Mistake or not, it’s a damned outrage!”

      “But one must go on.” She wiped her eyes. “It is necessary to live for…” Her words trailed away.

      “Yes, there will be a future for you someday. And for France. What will you do now? And what about your cousin here in Paris? Are there any other relatives?”

      “My cousin, yes,” she murmured in a dazed voice. “Marie Grosholtz.”

      “I wonder if she has heard the news?”

      Melanie made an effort to pull herself together. “Yes, I had better go and see my cousin.”

      “I’ll come with you.”

      “No! That is, I think it will be better if you don’t come just now. Besides, you still have important business that you must be about.”

      “You will be all right?”

      “Yes!” And it seemed that, with a great effort, she had pulled herself together. She sounded almost normal. “I am sure.”

      The comment about his business was true enough. His meeting with Paine could be of some importance, and ought not to be postponed, even though Radcliffe had arrived too late to exert any influence on behalf of the Romain family.

      Radcliffe reluctantly agreed to the temporary separation. But he insisted on arranging a rendezvous with Melanie, at the address she had already given him.

      “Yes. Very well. We will meet there, and we will have … things to talk about, you and I. That is where my cousin is employed. Even if I should not be there, the people at that house will know where to reach me.”

* * *

      After being passed from one government official to another, most of whose names and functions he failed to remember, Philip told the last committee that he saw (whose title he never quite managed to find out) that, since housing seemed so difficult to obtain, he would appeal to his old acquaintance Thomas Paine, where he could be sure to obtain lodging for a few days at least. That seemed to solve the problem.

      Meanwhile, Old Jules had kept tagging along with Philip. The old man was carrying his own identification paper, provided by the Committee of his own district, but he might as well have left it at home. With an American to question, a new set of foreign opinions to be sounded, none of the authorities seemed much interested in one more aged provincial.

      Having given up on housing for the moment, Radcliffe set out to locate Tom Paine.

      Again and again, as he sought to find his way to Paine’s lodgings, Radcliffe’s papers were checked by heavily armed and mustached men in workingmen’s coats, with tricolor cockades on their red caps, who looked at the documents, and at him, suspiciously. He thought several of them were probably unable to read.

      In fluent French he declaimed, so often that it began to seem like part of a ritual: “As an American, I am fully in sympathy with your wish to be rid of kings and queens.”

      Absent this almost regular interference, Paine would not have been hard to find. He was at his house. Paine during much of his stay in Paris occupied a rented mansion at No. 63, Rue de Faubourg St. Denis. While still technically within the city, the area had a rural character, and seemed far removed from Parisian street life.

      The house was separated from the street by walls and gates, and, isolated in a grove of maple trees, reminded Radcliffe of a farmhouse. Indeed the courtyard was like a farmyard, with geese and chickens scratching and waddling about.

* * *

      Paine was a red-nosed man in his late fifties, a couple of inches under six feet tall, very nearly