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

in which the dummy head of the night’s first subject would later be cast in hot wax.

      Then the younger woman gave a little cry of triumph. “Ah, here he is!”

      Melanie had found the head she had been looking for. There had been twenty-eight executed in the previous day’s batch, and the search had not been particularly easy.

      “But I think I recognize that face,” I ejaculated suddenly. “Is it not Lavoisier?”

      Yes, even I had heard of Lavoisier, the man who now, two hundred years later, is called the father of chemistry, and even I was shocked. Why should the artistic authorities, or the political, have wanted to execute a man of science and then immortalize their crime in wax? Of course the two fields of endeavor were still nowhere near as sharply demarcated as they have recently become.

      It was Lavoisier who proposed the name “oxygen” for the dephlogisticated air required to support a fire. He had worked diligently for the Revolution in its early stages, perfecting its gunpowder and its cannon. But he had been overtaken by a period in his past when he had served as a kind of tax-collector for the old regime, and yesterday had received his reward.

      Marie observed: “Someone pointed out his name on the list to Robespierre, and our leader said: The Revolution has no need of scientists.’“

      And that, I thought, should have been chiseled on his tombstone.

      I felt that Melanie deserved some reward for the assistance she had earlier given me, or attempted to give me, through her medical efforts. It was no fault of hers that those efforts were misguided. But I was not as greatly and as formally in her debt as I was in Radcliffe’s.

      “I understand now, Mademoiselle, the purpose of your work, and I find nothing discreditable about it. I regret having suggested—what I did suggest. My sincere apologies.” I made a slight bow, including Marie, who nodded in return.

      Your apology is accepted, Citizen Legrand—and what of M’sieu Radcliffe? Is there … is there…”

      “Is there any hope? I think so. You have told me where he is. Now we shall see what we can do.”

      “You mean… ?”

      “I mean to help him. As to how, that has yet to be decided.”

* * *

      The prison called La Conciergerie, like most of the others in the city, was busy day and night during the climactic summer of the Terror. I think that not a single cell stood empty for more than an hour or two. The population fluctuated less than you might think, given the high turnover. On average the count stood at about three hundred souls, during the peak years of ’93 and ’94. The place stank, of course, of fear and sweat and unwashed bodies, though not as badly as most of the prisons of that epoch. An extra excitement seemed to vibrate in the air. I gathered that if one had to be in prison, this was definitely the place.

      Conducting a preliminary reconnaissance on a rainy afternoon, I walked around the prison section of the Palace, or rather I covered three sides of it by this method, looking over the vast gray building from the outside.

      I also made a flying trip, by night. Both methods of scouting had their advantages.

      This prison formed part of the Palais de Justice, which stood on the same island in the Seine as Notre Dame, and at one time or another during the Terror its cells accommodated very many of the most famous victims, including Hebert, Corday, Robespierre, Marie Antoinette, and Danton—besides Charles Darnay, who later achieved a certain literary fame, and a few other foreigners.

      Victims were brought in at all hours, while others were hauled away to attend their trials, most of the latter soon returning under sentence of death. Of the many who were taken from their cells never to return, all but a very few went to their executions. Also coming and going constantly were police and lawyers, along with members of the new hierarchy of bureaucrats, including some of the many priests who had sworn allegiance to the Revolution. As at any other institution where numbers of people dwelt, tradesmen came and went, food and other necessities were delivered.

      I soon learned, somewhat to my surprise, that there seldom passed an evening in this house of horrors when at least one feast was not in progress. These banquets and parties were always rude and raucous but sometimes elaborate and expensive, hosted by one or more of those who were to lose their heads on the next day. Often these affairs were amazingly lavish. As a rule the guards and other officials, following a tradition established during the Old Regime, could easily be persuaded to go along with this practice, while maintaining the essentials of tight security. People who had experienced both prisons said that this one had a conviviality lacking in even the most luxurious quarters of the Bastille.

      On occasion La Conciergerie even welcomed the efforts of musicians and other entertainers, hired by the more prosperous of the condemned at their own expense, to brighten the last days and hours of their impoverished comrades as well as their own. I wondered what success a fortune teller might enjoy. Dedicated atheists, of whom there were many among the Revolutionary theorists, would frown at the practice, and I supposed that for many other prisoners the idea would be too much to take.

      Still, it occurred to me that this might be a good role for Constantia to play.

      A gypsy singer and dancer might easily double as a fortune teller. Vague possibilities stirred, as is usual when I am making plans. She might specialize in telling happy fortunes for the prisoners’ loved ones elsewhere.

      I supposed I could, myself, appear as a gypsy musician. Sawing at a violin, or strumming a guitar. But there was not much time for elaborate schemes.

      Radcliffe, like other prisoners, was at certain times allowed out of his cell to take part in at least some of these parties. It proved childishly