A Sharpness on the Neck

Chapter Seventeen

After his return to Revolutionary Paris in the last decade of the eighteenth century, Radu Dracula maintained at least two and sometimes three residences in the city, keeping no single one for more than about a year. He occupied each domicile under a different name, and of course lived in each in the guise of a breather. The metropolitan population was now swollen to more than half a million, and despite the determined efforts of the new government to keep track of everyone, one who knew how to go about such matters found it easy to dispose of one official identity and assume another.

He found it delightful to contemplate a world grown so crowded with breathing folk. The more of them there were, the more the beautiful youth of both sexes excited his sensuous cravings. And all his life, from his own youthful breathing years, he had preferred cities over the countryside.

While the hunting party composed of his associates had been out scouring farms and villages and forests, hot on the trail of his brother, Radu himself had remained in the city—which was, after all, a lot safer than trying to hunt down Vlad. He understood that fact much better than did any of the people he had sent out.

* * *

Endlessly fascinated by the Terror as it developed, the younger brother spent a great deal of time roaming about the city, usually after dark, dressed in sans-culotte costume.

Wearing his carmagnole and his red woolen nightcap with a jaunty tricolor cockade pinned on one side, in perfect accord with the latest in popular fashion, he joined hundreds of others in haunting the Place de la Revolution, waiting for the next batch of executions.

In such guise, he had taken a modest part, chiefly that of an encouraging observer, in the slaughter at the Palace of the Tuileries, in 1792; he never realized how narrowly he had escaped Vlad's efforts to find him there.

The sole survivor of Radu's failed war party returned to the city, bringing his master the story of the disastrous attack upon his older brother. The survivor for some reason believed that his making a thorough report entitled him to a reward of gold, or at least forgiveness, for his part in the fiasco.

When Radu was certain that he had extracted every bit of relevant information his informant could provide, he paid him instead in a different kind of coin. Then he made his own preparations to hurry to the scene of the reported combat.

Packing up one of his portable caches of home earth in a convenient traveling bag, and saddling a horse, the younger Dracula started out. He had a hidden earth or two of his own in the area that he was bound for, but Vlad had been there and might have destroyed them. Radu intended to take no chances.

Following with some difficulty the trail of his vanished posse, according to the best directions the unnerved survivor had been able to provide, he came in the course of two days to the rural site of the fight, a scene which had begun to regain its pastoral and peaceful character. Here the visitor from the city spent some time in observing closely the remaining marks on the ground and torn-up grass and shrubbery, reconstructing the event in his own mind. It appeared that the failed assassins had almost succeeded in killing Vlad before he could dig himself up out of his ravaged earth. There, certainly, was the ruined grave, with a lot of French dirt still scattered about, and the remnants of at least one breather's body still lying where the crows and wild dogs had let them fall.

Radu drove off the remaining scavengers, who dared to clamor their annoyance at him. He even considered refreshing himself with the blood of one of them. For some months now all the blood, all the nourishment he had ingested had been human. This rich diet sometimes began to pall a trifle through the very sameness of its luxury; but now, after thinking the matter over, he decided to hold out for some finer sustenance than wild dog.

He was impressed anew, though not at all surprised, by the evidence of his brother's ferocity and skill in combat. These were matters that the younger brother knew and appreciated better than anyone else who was still alive.

With the experience of three hundred years to guide him, Radu had little difficulty interpreting a number of the surviving details of sign left by the fight. Scraping at the ground with a booted foot, he unearthed more rat-gnawed breather's bones, the last remains of another of his servants.

Served the fools right for bungling their job!

Until this moment he had at least allowed himself to hope that his brother was truly dead. But he no longer thought that there was any chance of that. Logically, of course, there was still a chance that Vlad, injured and caught out in the open, had died of his wounds, or succumbed to the searing power of unshielded daylight.

Radu had chosen a strong, phlegmatic mount, and he went riding languidly. Today it amused him to be brazenly aristocratic. Traveling by daylight under the shelter of a cloudy sky and broad-brimmed hat, he found and followed the trail left by his wounded brother in leaving the scene of the struggle.

He rode past one vulture, and then another, who from their perches on high dead branches regarded the journeying vampire with the air of amused spectators. He tried to find his own amusement in the fact, but failed.

One thing the cautious searcher knew he would not find was his brother's corpse; the old, old nosferatu did not linger on in any earthly form once they had expired; their bodies tended to vanish, quickly and rather spectacularly.

In good time the trail he was following brought him to a chateau, or manor, which now stood silent and deserted under the moon.

For a time Radu sat motionless in his saddle, probing the scene before him with all his senses. Only a few days ago, this house had been someone's dwelling, but now the subtle changes accompanying desertion had come over the place. Dismounting and walking forward, he found that he could enter almost without difficulty. Only a shadow of the habitation factor remained to slow him at the door, testifying to recent occupation.

If his brother had found shelter anywhere, the odds were overwhelming that it was here.

That feeling was soon confirmed when Radu sensed the presence of a vampire's earth. Alluring, like the faint aroma of baked bread to a breather. Radu had not known about this hideaway of Vlad's until now. There were no clues that a breather would have noticed, but undoubtedly there existed a flattened oval of Transylvanian soil under the paving of the floor in the oldest part of the house, beneath an odd irregular chamber now used only as a storeroom or shed.

The hideaway was now unoccupied, but evidence was not lacking that Vlad had been here, not many days ago. Wounded, but doubtless once he had reached this spot, he had been able to recover; ominously, there was no lingering psychic smell of vampire-death. A few small stains had been allowed to dry on the stone floor, and had since almost disappeared. But Radu could sense them.

Vampire blood.

The investigator was tempted to take advantage of the earth of his homeland to catch a daytime nap. But in the end he did not dare do so, thinking it quite possible that Vlad might be returning at any moment.

There might, he thought, be some advantage to finding out who else had been living here. Perhaps he would be able to talk to one of Vlad's active breathing helpers; there always seemed to be a few such folk around.

Prowling the deserted upper rooms of the house, he sought with no success for some evidence of the identity of the latest occupant. Well, there were other ways to obtain information.

At dusk Radu emerged from a doze on his portable earth, which he had tucked away inside the trunk of a fallen tree, to look for someone from whom he might be able to obtain more information.

The young girl appeared very conveniently, climbing a gentle path that led up to the rear of the house, obviously coming back from the stream, where she had caught a fish or two, now gill-looped on a string, to eke out her meager diet. She was as wide-eyed and innocent as her fish. Oh, charming, charming!

He stood beside the path, impeccably handsome, radiating kindness. "What is your name, my child?"

"Marguerite, sir."

And the girl, with her fond memories of Vlad, was easily seduced by this man who in some ways resembled his older brother.

In the farmyard, and later inside the house, in the small room off the kitchen where she slept, Radu petted her and interrogated her. The girl's cheeks glowed and her breath came faster, and her fish soon fell to the ground forgotten.

When he thought he had all the information he was going to get, had learned all he could about Vlad's stay in this house and the breathing folk who'd sheltered him, the game which had begun as a form of lovemaking quickly grew more intense. He began the leisurely process of killing the girl, paralyzing her early in the game, sipping blood, a little from here, a little from there, and inflicting mutilation.

I know, he thought, pausing, licking blood from his long nails, listening abstractedly to the sounds of pain. This reminds me of a discussion I had once, with—someone, I forget his name. I know the very person with whom I would like to share and describe this adventure. Too bad that he is only a breather.

Marguerite's body was still shuddering, still breathing, when Radu let it slump to the floor amid stained bedding. Sniffing fastidiously, he could easily sense the flavor and the scent of Vlad upon her. Even the two small puncture wounds his brother had left upon her shapely neck were still unhealed.

He tasted her in that very spot, and then, in slow succession, at several other places on her now fully exposed body. Experimenting, to discover how quickly he could locate the nerve centers that afforded the most exquisite pain. This gave her remaining blood a delicate flavor, which could be thoroughly appreciated only by the true gourmet.

To complete his enjoyment of the young peasant girl he decided to allow himself an hour or so longer, and during that time he put aside all problems, giving himself over entirely to the experience. Regretfully he concluded that he could not spare more time than that.

Casting the still-shuddering body aside for the last time, he stretched luxuriously, put on his clothes again, and let his mind go wandering. He had quite forgotten about Marguerite before her last thread of life quietly parted.

Radu, startled out a reverie by a slight noise behind him, out in the kitchen, jumped to his feet with a pang of fear, nerves twanging like plucked catgut, then jumped again, spinning around in his tracks.

Only a mouse. Yes, only a mouse, this time.

He stood there shivering and angry, suddenly a terrified vampire. For a moment he was convinced that Vlad had lured and trapped him here…

He even feared for his life, though he knew Vlad was not going to kill him. For Radu the true death was always—almost always—a terrifying prospect.

Radu, unlike his elder brother, was not immune to fear. Far from it.

That was one reason why he hated his brother so intensely.

Reason returned, and soothed him. Yes, someday—he could not escape the thought—someday he would turn around and Vlad would be standing there, staring at him. And there would follow another century or two of punishment, of mental and physical torture that only one Dracula could devise for another…

Yes, someday. But just now Vlad was nowhere in sight. Gradually his pulse returned to normal.

Radu supposed it likely that he was never going to hear the full story of how his brother had been speared in his earth and almost done to death.

Rather it was now up to Radu to be on guard against Vlad's inevitable counterattack.

Traveling most of the way on two wings, part of the way on four legs (all his own), making faster time than on his outward journey, he was soon back in Paris. Once there, he set someone to finding out more about the owners of the chateau.

Shortly after Radu returned to Paris, one of his people reported to him with great excitement a rumor racing through the vampire world that Vlad was dead; but the younger brother was far too canny to trust to the truth of any such tale without substantial proof.

He said: "It will take very persuasive evidence indeed to convince me that he is truly dead. Never mind that for the moment. I want to know all thereis to discover about an American named Philip Radcliffe and a young Frenchwoman, Melanie Remain."

Radu the Handsome considered it prudent to invent yet another new identity for himself, to use when he chose to walk among breathers as one of them. He changed his residence as well, moving to humbler quarters though he still remained within the city.

And now, for the first time in several years, he seriously considered abandoning France, even Europe, altogether. He pictured himself fleeing, to America, or the South Seas, some land in the remotest corner of the earth. Vlad would not kill him; no, Radu felt confident of that when he thought about it calmly. But Vlad was quite capable of inflicting truly terrible punishments, indeed was ingenious at devising them. The thought of another century of nightmares was enough to make Radu feel faint. Yet he never considered abandoning his schemes against Vlad; it was as if he really had no choice.

Then Radu heard, through one of his revolutionary contacts, that Philip Radcliffe, an American who was supposedly of an aristocratic family, heir to the very manor in which Vlad had taken shelter, had been arrested at the orders of the Committee of Public Safety.

Radcliffe was being held in prison, and had already gone through a form of trial on charges of being an aristocrat—there seemed no doubt of that, given his mother's family. He was also charged with plotting, a vague but generally effective accusation.

Radu's informant shook her head and muttered: "They say that he is Franklin's bastard son, but I doubt that will be enough to save him."

Radu continued to find out all he could about the condemned suspect Radcliffe.

* * *

Knowing Vlad as well as he did, Radu was not slow to assume that Vlad considered himself bound in honor to save Radcliffe.

The younger brother thought: "Surely I can turn that to my advantage somehow."

The more the younger vampire thought about this news, the more it seemed to open a great opportunity. Now the scheming younger brother determined to lure Vlad into a trap, force him to fail in something he had sworn to do, and possibly engineer his death. He knew how his elder brother driveled on and on about what he conceived of as his honor.

The first step was to make sure that young Radcliffe was indeed sentenced to death, despite any connection that might be shown to exist between the young man and Benjamin Franklin, and/or Tom Paine.

For his activities as far back as the 10th of August of 1792, and at a number of other times and places, Radu in one of his identities as a breathing Frenchman had even attained some minor status as a Revolutionary hero and leader. The hero had not been heard of for some time, and was now thought to be dead.

That was fine with Radu. Of course no vampire wanted to be subject to the intense scrutiny of a breathing public. More than very moderate success, in any breathers' enterprise, could draw a dangerous amount of attention to oneself, and awaken jealousy in potential rivals. Better to play the role of an almost-anonymous but recognizable and trustworthy sans-culotte. With that goal in mind, he had arranged to be signed up by Robespierre as a spy and special agent, reporting only to the Incorruptible himself.

Today Robespierre, cool as always, seeming impressively above most of the concerns of lesser men, was striking a pose of symbolic significance at one end of the green, cloth-covered table of the Revolutionary Tribunal, looming over everyone else including the judges, who were sitting.

The Incorruptible, chiding some judge for suspicious leniency, was saying calmly: "True innocence is never afraid of public vigilance." Then, glancing around suspiciously, he added in a private whisper to Radu: "See me later at the house."

The Tribunal met for most of its sessions in a huge, cave-like chamber with marble walls that in years past had accommodated the meetings of the Paris Parlement. Candles burned before the court clerk as he labored with a quill pen to keep up with the accusations made by the examining lawyers and the judgments handed down.

Frequently in attendance at the Tribunal, when bad weather or some other reason kept them from the guillotine, were Madame Defarge, and the rest of the bloodthirsty tri-coteuses, the women who sat knitting through all the trials and executions.

(Narrator's note: "I don't see how those women can do that," Constantia once commented to me, when we were speaking of these women. "No?"

"No; I hate knitting.")

Later in the day Radu, doing his best to fulfill his duties as a spy, showed up at the carpenter's house, bringing Robespierre, for his eyes only, a new list of suspects. Heading the list was a name often used by his brother as an alias—Corday. And a description of Vlad, in his frequently adopted guise of a young breather.

Then, into the ears of these dedicated, incorruptible defenders of revolutionary virtue, he whispered his poisonous advice, suspicions, accusations.

Many others were doing the same thing, or trying! But Radu had access to Robespierre in his private lodgings.

Everyone in the house had seen Radu coming or going at one time or another, and everyone thought he was there as a companion or associate of someone else. Therefore he could come and go pretty much as he pleased, enjoying the situation immensely.

Duplay himself seemed under the impression that Radu was a member of the secret police, coming in at all hours anonymously to give the Incorruptible his secret reports. And Radu, struck by an inspiration, gradually maneuvered Duplay into starting work on a wooden guillotine blade, precisely shaped to fit the grooves in the machine, the edge filed and sanded as smooth and sharp as wood could be. Radu wasn't yet sure just 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 Hebert, 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 Hubert 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, not even the Incorruptible himself, whose elimination would have broken the fever. Truly it seemed to swell up out of the People themselves. But it eventually proved self-limiting; the very individuals, the cells and organs of the body politic by which the game of guillotining was enforced, were the same ones on whom the blade fell with most dreadful frequency.

It is, I think, a significant fact that, as one historian has written, no high-ranking Revolutionary authority ever attended any execution but his own.