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

how he could possibly induce Vlad to lie down on the plank that fed the machine, but it would please him enormously to have some possibility along that line. He gave the cabinetmaker to understand that Sanson, the chief executioner, was eager to try out such a device.

      “The danger of rust is eliminated, you see,” Radu improvised. “Despite the constant wetting.”

      The woodworker frowned, picking absently at a sore on one of his own callused fingers, where the broken fragment of a wooden splinter was trying to work its way up out of the skin. “But the edge, citizen—surely a wooden edge will break and wear away much faster? One or two tough necks…”

      “We will see; but they want to make a test using wood.”

      “I suppose, if you say so, citizen—but in the name of the people, why?”

      Radu ignored the question. Looking around, as if to see whether they were being overheard, he let an ominous undertone creep into his voice. “If I were you, Citizen Duplay, I’d work fast, and say nothing of this to anyone.”

      Already the younger vampire saw several possible ways of turning these things to his advantage. If he played his cards right, it was not inconceivable that he should succeed in getting his older brother’s neck beneath the heavy—in his case, wooden—knife.

* * *

      At about the same time an elated Robespierre, who seemed totally convinced he had the perfect society now almost within his grasp, was driving everyone to prepare for the Festival of the Supreme Being, which he had decreed would be held June 8,1794.

      When that date came around, I, Vlad Dracula, made sure to be part of the audience in the cathedral. I was still stalking my brother, of course, and incidentally marveling at the blasphemy.

* * *

      On 17 November, 1793, a week after the first great Festival of Reason, the Commune had ordered all churches in Paris closed For the Festivals of Reason that followed, Notre Dame cathedral and a number of lesser churches had been turned, at least for a few days, into pagan temples. Stained-glass windows bearing religious images were draped with canvas until their final fate could be decided. The interim effect was to dim the interior enormously, even in broad daylight, incidentally making the place vastly more comfortable for the nosferatu.

      Of course every trace of Christian “superstition,” in the form of ornamentation, had already been expunged from the structure. Where the high altar had stood there now rose up an imitation of some Greek temple decorated with pikes and other weapons. The music which replaced the hymns may be imagined.

      I remember hearing Hébert, one of the most vicious of the Revolutionary rabble-rousers, remark with a chuckle: “How angry the good God must be! No doubt the trumpets of judgment are about to sound.”

      But now Hébert himself was dead, reduced to the status of a headless corpse. He and eighteen of his colleagues and supporters had been fed to Moloch a few months back, on the 24th of March.

      I remember Reason, sitting in her litter, borne by drunken men in what were meant to be Roman togas, swilling wine and brandy out of consecrated chalices.

      I remember the burning of saints’ relics, and ancient churchly books and documents, making a strange, rich incense. At such a time, I rejoiced that I was not compelled to breathe.

      In the midst of all this sacrilege I moved, now wearing my own carmagnole as protective coloration, stalking my brother patiently, knowing that he would hardly be able to deny himself such sights and sounds as these.

      Often I scowled at the blasphemous goings-on, and once or twice I came near doing violence. But in the end I made no move to interfere, thinking I could not allow myself to be distracted from my search.

* * *

      On the 19th of the new month Prairial, all citizens had been invited to decorate their dwellings with flowers and live branches, a display of living things in honor of Robespierre’s new friend, the Supreme Being. In the Jardin National, an amphitheater had been created, and in the most prominent place a statue representing Wisdom was temporarily camouflaged as the dingy, ugly figure of Atheism.

      Toward the end of the Festival, someone ritually set fire to the straw man of Atheism, which, having been made for the purpose, obligingly burst into flames. The symbols did not quite all fall into place for Robespierre, though, as Wisdom emerged from the trial somewhat blackened and obscured.

      A wax bust of Jean-Paul Marat, the martyred Friend of the People, was hauled around in a triumphal chariot, labeled:

TO MARAT, FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE

THIS IS HOW THE PEOPLE HONORS ITS FRIENDS

      The vampire had never met the murdered man in the flesh, but if the Friend of the People had really been as ugly as everyone said he was, then the wax image, which must have been modeled by Marie Grosholtz, was impressively lifelike.

      By now the Terror was in full stride and threatening to consume Paris like a fire. The chief concern of many of the supposed leaders of the people was now nothing more than keeping themselves alive.

      Indeed, I had begun to think that this Revolution of the French was something the world had never seen before, an event transcending ordinary wars, rebellions, and foolishness, far surpassing all the common outbreaks of bloodlust and madness. Casting my thoughts back through the three-hundred-plus years of my existence, I could come up with nothing very much like it. Mere horrors and blasphemies, of course, abound in every age. Wars come and go with the inevitability of thunderstorms, and rebellions and mutinies were not uncommon. But this…

      Almost two hundred years earlier, at the court of Ivan the Terrible, I had seen horrors unbelievable … but no, that had been different; Ivan and his terror prefigured Hitler, a case of one man’s madness infecting multitudes. This new French Terror had no such focal point. At the height of the infection, there was no individual,