A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (most read book in the world .TXT) 📗

happy with his day’s work, was eating jam with his lady friend, the two of them laughing as they smeared the red stuff on each other’s faces. Another, enacting the role of a servant, laughing like a madman all the while, was handing out neatly folded napkins to his unwashed comrades and delicately filling their wineglasses. Someone had been using the table linen to clean and test the sharpness of a bloodstained sword.

      Well, no one was going to be washing and mending these tablecloths tomorrow. All that I heard and saw assured me that any servants who had not joined the mob were going to be murdered as the lackeys of aristocrats.

      Other people were methodically smashing plates and glasses. A very young but ugly woman had bared her breasts, and was dancing wildly on a table to music that she alone could hear. A man with a pot of honey and a spoon in hand stood in front of her, trying to attract her attention.

      I pushed on, having forgotten for the time being my recent new acquaintance outside. Now and then someone bumped into me, took a look into my face, and moved on. I patiently proceeded.

      Here was the doorway to what I realized must have been the Queen’s private suite of rooms. The way was partially blocked by a row of dead bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets. Such a neat enshrouding must have taken place earlier in the day, when some tidy-minded members of the household staff had still had time to worry about the dead.

      Inside the Queen’s rooms, more women of all ages were ransacking the wardrobe of Marie Antoinette, trying on hats and bonnets. Nearby stood a piano, violently bereft of ivory keys, steel strings pulled out and broken. A bust of the young Dauphin, which must have been on the piano, now lay on the floor, chipped and soiled.

      Poor Marie Antoinette! Not that I ever met her, but I doubt she meant anyone any harm, no more than her husband did. There is no shred of evidence, you know, that she ever really said it: I mean of course the famous quote about letting the poor eat cake if they could find no bread.

Ah! ca ira,caira,ca ira,

Les aristocrates a la lanterne…

      So it goes, so it goes, so it goes. To the nearest lamppost with those damned aristocrats, and hang them high. The ragged chorus dissolved in incoherent noise. Other musical instruments had been smashed also.

      (Radu, where are you? Surely you, as inevitably as the million flies, will be drawn to this scene.)

      “Hey! You, there!”

      The roar of triumph had come from behind me. I thought that the voice of Satan was in that noise. Turning, I beheld the speaker. He was advancing on me, a massive, archetypal figure in a red cap, clad in the rags and wooden shoes of a homeless Parisian, wearing the apron of his trade and waving a butcher’s cleaver. Having established eye contact, I raised my eyebrows and slightly shook my head, trying to convey the idea that it would do him no good to pursue me further.

      Normally when I attempt to communicate an idea of this kind I am successful. But not this time. Try to be kind, as folk in the twentieth century are wont to say, and see where it gets you. The man with the cleaver was all enfevered by the carnage surrounding him; he had me cornered, and plainly he was determined not to be cheated of his fun. No doubt in my hat and cloak I did look like some simpleton’s idea of an aristocrat attempting to disguise his appearance.

      My righteous butcher, armed with unshakable faith in his own strength and aflame with revolutionary zeal, was at least correct about one thing: He had me cornered, as it was still daylight. Denied the choice of disappearing into nothingness, or of turning into some four-legged or winged beast, I had no really convenient option other than to stand my ground.

      As the cleaver slashed toward my head, I plucked it from his grip and threw it away. A moment later I had seized one-handed the neck of that great cockroach and, with bone-cracking force, smashed his surprised face into the elegant wall paneling.

      On that afternoon in that particular palace no one paid much attention to a little more blood here and there. In fact, I had thought that no one in the rooms nearby was paying any attention at all, or I would have chosen a less dramatic method of pest eradication. My meatcutter’s body slid easily down the wall and blended into the similar litter on the floor. Briefly I considered claiming his red cap as the spoils of war, to serve me as protective coloration. But alas, it was already too late for that.

      Unhappily my disposal of this vermin, which might well have gone unnoticed amid the general uproar and carnage, had instead attracted the attention of several additional aristocrat-hunters, no less eager than the first. They were now shouting at me from an adjoining room. These folk I hoped to be able to avoid by retreating into the upper levels of the palace, where I expected to find mostly servants’ rooms.

* * *

      Kind fortune discovered to me a narrow stair, formerly a path for unobtrusive servants, which went up inconspicuously within the thickness of a wall. I took this path, and no one immediately followed me. For a minute or two I was able to hope that my pursuers would be distracted, but so determined were they that at last I judged it wise to climb out of one window and up a more or less sheer wall into another one, following a route that few if any breathing opponents could have managed, and none at all if they were carrying weapons.

      Things were going on much the same upon the floor above, except that there were fewer people. On impulse, throwing open the doors in a large cupboard in hopes