The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 29

After the blade had fallen, the head and corpse of Marie Antoinette were summarily tossed back into the tumbrel and taken to the Madeleine, an out-of-the-way cemetery on the grounds of what had once been a Benedictine monastery. Although the journey was less than a kilometer, the rue d’Anjou was unpaved and the wheels of the tumbrel sometimes became stuck. It was already midday by the time the cart got there, with the marquis, still invisible, trudging along behind it on foot.

The gravediggers, unwilling to interrupt their lunch, told the driver simply to leave his cargo on the grass while they finished eating. They had been working for weeks, digging trenches, packing them full, then applying a liberal dose of quicklime to dissolve the remains. As far as they were concerned, this was just one more customer, and she could wait.

The marquis kept watch from a safe distance, where the head lay on the grass, its white bonnet now encrusted with blood and plastered across its features. Standing beside a stone bench, left there by the monks who had all since been executed, he forced himself to think of happier times, when the young Marie Antoinette, uprooted from everyone and everything she knew, had eagerly accepted his guidance and support through the maze of the most formal court in the history of the Continent.

And though it was true that she had had her faults-she could indeed be frivolous and wildly extravagant, petty and jealous, fickle and unfaithful-he had yet to find any human being who did not. And her life, despite its outward grandeur, had also had far more than its share of loneliness, lovelessness, and despair. Born in a palace, she had died on a scaffold.

And at the last she lay a few yards off, dismembered and defiled, on a patch of dirt. When he was confident that the gravediggers were paying more attention to their apples and cheese than to the queen’s remains, he ventured closer. Though any rational man would have thought him insane even to question it, he had to be sure that no magic had prevailed, that the queen was well and truly dead. He was just reaching down to brush away the cloud of flies and lift the bonnet away from her face when he heard someone shout, “I hope we’re in time!”

Looking up, he saw Hebert himself, his rapier jingling at his side, and his two accomplices approaching the gravediggers. A young woman wearing a kerchief over her head, and carrying a heavy basket, struggled to keep up.

“Citizen Hebert!” the head gravedigger said, leaping up and brushing the crumbs from his shirt. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“The hell you have,” Hebert said, “but it’s just as well. Mademoiselle Tussaud has her work cut out for her.” With a flick of his finger, he directed the woman toward the body of the queen, and Sant’Angelo flinched. What fresh desecration was this to be?

As the Chief of the Committee of Public Safety and his cronies bantered with the gravediggers not far off, Mademoiselle Tussaud knelt beside the remains and dug into her basket. The marquis stood stock-still, hardly daring to breathe. She looked vaguely familiar to the marquis, then suddenly he placed her; he had seen her at Versailles, giving drawing lessons to the king’s sister, Madame Elizabeth.

And now, here she was, with a kerchief concealing her own shaved skull. So she was a prisoner, too, Sant’Angelo thought, one who had no doubt been given a reprieve by the Tribunal so long as she did their awful bidding.

With the efficiency any artisan would admire, she smoothed a patch of canvas on the ground, then arranged her supplies on it. As the marquis silently observed, she turned her back to the men and murmured to the head, “Please forgive me, madame. I wish you no harm.” The tips of her fingers made a hurried cross on her own bosom… and then she peeled the soiled bonnet away from the queen’s head and laid it to one side.

Peering close, the marquis was relieved to see no sign of animation. The eyes were closed, the mouth slack and twisted.

With a dampened sponge, Mademoiselle Tussaud wiped away the dirt and caked blood, dabbing at the drooping Habsburg lip.

“I am sorry to be so rough,” she confided, as if she was accustomed to such conversations, “but they never give me enough time. A mask needs to be done right, or it shouldn’t be done at all.”

The death masks of prominent victims had been exhibited in Paris for some time now. The marquis had seen the mask of the butchered Princesse de Lamballe, for example, exhibited in a store window like the latest fashion. But this one, the marquis feared, would undoubtedly be the biggest draw of them all.

Then, with a handful of rags, the young woman dried the features of the face, and set the head upright.

“The barber really took a hatchet to you, didn’t he?” she said. “Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I will make you beautiful again.”

Taking up her hairbrush, Tussaud pulled the bristles roughly through the tangled mat of hair, once, twice, but on the third stroke-just as Sant’Angelo felt sure that his worst fears had not been realized-the eyes of the queen flew open, in an expression of utter bewilderment and horror. It was as if she had been willing herself to remain in some dream, concealed by the bonnet, but now, with these constant ministrations, could no longer sustain her disbelief. The mouth opened, struggling to speak, but the only sound was a wet smack. Tussaud fainted away on the grass, as the famous blue-gray eyes flitted about the cemetery, lost, confused, in terror.

And the marquis-who knew now, without a doubt, that she had looked into the glass of La Medusa -also knew what had to be done. And swiftly.

The mouth opened wider, as if to scream, the teeth stained pink with her own blood.

If he meant to save her from suffering for eternity, he would have to act quickly.

Running to the open grave, he grabbed the first woman’s head he could find and plunked it down on the cloth. This one made no protest.

And then, with his invisible hands, he lifted the head of Marie Antoinette, covering her eyes with the bonnet as a final mercy, and said, “Be at peace.” Then he dropped it into the copper-lined barrel of quicklime. There was a hissing and bubbling as the head sank, the caustic brew instantly working to dissolve the skin and devour the bone. In a matter of a minute, the flesh was gone and the skull had disintegrated. Only a few stray hairs stuck up out of the boiling stew.

“What’s taking so long?” Hebert called out to Tussaud, who was just recovering her senses. “We haven’t got all day.” He was sharing a bottle of wine with his committee members-one of whom still sported the white feather in his cap. Its tip was now scarlet, and Sant’Angelo knew perfectly well how it had come by its color.

“Even now, this queen keeps everyone waiting,” the man with the bloody feather quipped, and everyone laughed.

“We’ll have to put that in the paper,” Hebert said. “Make a note of it, Jerome.”

The third man, with the ink-stained hands of a printer, said, “I won’t forget.”

The young Tussaud swallowed hard and looked at the head on the cloth, and even if she knew that this was no longer the head of the queen, she knew enough to say nothing. Bewildered, she draped the damp muslin cloth over the face, spread an even coat of plaster, and after allowing it to dry, pried the mask loose and laid it in her basket, covered with a scrap of cotton. Brushing her hands clean on her skirts, she stood up and said to Hebert, “I am done here, Citizen.”

“It’s about time,” he replied, strapping on the sword he had laid on the grass. “I’ve got a newspaper to get out.” He slapped his tricornered hat back on his head.

“Tomorrow’s edition should be a sellout,” the head gravedigger predicted, in his most unctuous tones.

“I’m going to write the whole issue myself,” Hebert announced, snapping his fingers at Tussaud, who was struggling to gather up all her things. “Octave, go help her, for God’s sake, or we’ll never get back to the office.”

When they had gone, Sant’Angelo waited, as silent witness and friend, until the gravediggers threw all that was left of the queen’s remains into the open pit. Without the head, he was relieved to see, life was at last extinguished. Using the bottom of his boot, the head gravedigger tipped the barrel of quicklime over on top of the bodies, waiting for the brew to sizzle and hiss its way through the carnage. Then, as they started to shovel the dirt in after, the marquis turned and went to exact his revenge.

Sant’Angelo, like everyone in Paris, knew where Le Pere Duchesne was published, and he waited outside for many hours, watching Hebert at a desk above the printing press, writing in full view of passersby. Page after page flew off his desk, written in the earthy, lewd voice of the titular character, depicted as an angry peasant with a pipe between his teeth. The marquis also caught glimpses of Jerome and Octave, setting type, cranking the press, reading proofs.

When the work was finally done, it was almost midnight, and they adjourned to celebrate at what was once the barracks of the Swiss Guard. But now that the entire Guard had been slaughtered in defense of the royal family, it was called the Tavern of the Guillotine, and it offered an unequaled view of the scaffold; on the back of the menu each day there was a list of the people to be executed.

The marquis, still wearing the garland, sat at a table outside, listening to their boisterous laughter as Hebert read aloud passages from the next day’s paper.

“When the widow Capet saw that she had traded a coach-and-four for a dung cart, she stamped her pretty little foot and demanded that someone answer for it.”

And then, “With the rudeness for which the bitch was widely known, she purposely trod on the foot of Monsieur Le Paris”-as the executioner was commonly known-“and would have thrown a proper fit if she’d only been able to keep her wits, and her head, about her.”

It went on like that for well over an hour, but the marquis used that time to stoke his anger and resolve. He rested the harpe, an exact duplicate of the sword he had fashioned for the hand of his Perseus, against the knee of his cassock.

And when the Chief of the Committee of Public Safety-and publisher of the scurrilous paper-emerged, again with his two accomplices, Sant’Angelo followed them. They were going, he soon realized, to the Conciergerie, perhaps to select some more victims for the next day. The streets were dark and grew damp as they approached the banks of the Seine. The lower level of the prison, where the pailleux were confined like cattle in a pen, looked out, through a grating of iron bars, onto a walkway that ran along the river. It was the only air that penetrated the dreadful caverns. But the path was narrow and at that hour no one was around, except for the prisoners who saw Hebert through the bars. Most of them were silent as he passed-many had been denounced and sentenced by this very man-but a few could not restrain themselves and reached out their arms to plead for mercy or beg for a chance to argue their innocence one last time. Their frightened faces, grimy with sweat and tears, glistened in the torchlight from within the cells.

The marquis would not get a better opportunity. Moving up swiftly behind the printer Jerome, he whispered in his ear, “Wouldn’t you like to wash that ink off your hands?”

The man whirled around and saw only the slick cobblestones shining in the moonlight. But he shouted, “Who’s there?” and Hebert and Octave, who was still sporting the bloodstained feather in his cap, turned around.

“What are you shouting about? Can’t you see that these people need their rest?” Hebert said with a laugh.

An elderly prisoner called out to him, “Citizen Hebert-a word, I beg you-just one word!”

“There was someone right here,” the printer insisted. “He just spoke to me.”

“And what did he say?” Octave asked, smirking.

“He asked… if I wanted to wash the ink off.”

And then, before Hebert or Octave could make some rejoinder, the marquis grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him, his boots scuffing wildly at the stones, to the stone parapet above the riverfront.

“Help me!” the printer screamed. “Help me!”

With a mighty shove, Sant’Angelo sent him toppling over the wall. There was a loud splash as he plunged into the Seine.

Octave and Hebert ran to the parapet, staring down into the swiftly flowing stream, but there was no sign of him. Octave drew a pistol from his belt, and Hebert pulled his rapier from its scabbard.

But they could see nothing, and no one, to fight.

The marquis slipped behind Octave. The sound of his boots was swallowed by the cries of the prisoners, many more of whom were now pressed against the bars, their hands clutching the grate, their eyes bulging with wonder. Whatever strange miracle was occurring outside their bars, they wholeheartedly approved.

“So, you like your souvenirs?” Sant’Angelo murmured as he ripped the bloody feather from Octave’s cap.

He made the feather bob and dance in the empty air, until Octave took a wild shot at it. The marquis felt the heat of the bullet as it passed below his arm. Then he raised his sword and, in one fell swoop, sliced the man’s hand off altogether.

Still clutching the pistol, the hand fell, and Octave didn’t seem to understand what had just happened. He stood stock-still, looking down at his own spurting wrist, before suddenly howling in pain, wedging the stump under his armpit and fleeing down the concourse.

The prisoners, delighted with the show so far, banged on the bars with tin spoons and closed fists.

The chief backed away, his sword probing the darkness in every direction.

“Where are you?” Hebert cried out. “Who are you?”

But for this last act, the marquis did not want to be invisible. He wanted Hebert to know who was about to kill him. Taking off the garland, he slowly came into view, like an image coalescing from the moonbeams themselves.

“The priest?” Hebert said.

The black cassock whipped around Sant’Angelo’s legs, blown by the wind from the river. The bloody sword glittered at his side.

“Guards!” Hebert shouted at the top of his lungs. “Guards!”

Wordlessly, the marquis moved closer.

Hebert swung wildly with his rapier, all the while retreating, but when a blow came close enough, Sant’Angelo parried it with the edge of his own sword. The clang of the steel rang out through the night air.

The prisoners shouted, “Kill him, Father! Kill him!”

Hebert’s tricornered hat fell from his head and blew along the stones. His face was white with terror, and suddenly he found himself so close to the bars that the frenzied hands of the inmates were clutching at his sleeves and collar. He whipped around, slashing at the arms extended through the grate, then turned again to confront the marquis.

There was the clatter of hooves, as mounted gendarmes, aroused by the commotion, appeared at the end of the concourse.

“Who’s down there?” the captain cried. “What’s going on?”

“Shoot him!” Hebert called out to them. “I order you! Shoot the priest!”

Sant’Angelo saw a musket lowered, and a puff of smoke. The bullet whizzed over his head and clanged off the iron bars.

With a sweep of his blade, he knocked the sword from Hebert’s hand, but a fusillade of shots suddenly ricocheted around him; the gendarmes were galloping down the concourse. Putting a hand on Hebert’s chest, he thrust him up against the seething wall of fingers and hands, hundreds of them, all intent on tearing him to pieces. Like a pack of harpies, they grabbed hold of him, rending his clothes and ripping out his hair, scratching at his flesh, digging in their nails like claws. An old man gnawed ferociously at one arm. A hollow-eyed girl inserted a knitting needle into the back of his neck as delicately as if she were making lace.

Slipping the garland back onto his brow, and holding his arms out as if in surrender to the coming soldiers, the marquis left the prisoners to their deadly work. In seconds, he had melted back into the night.

And as the horses whinnied around him, and the gendarmes swung their muskets this way and that-“Where’s the priest?” their captain cried, waving his sword, “Where did he go?”-Sant’Angelo turned toward home. The streets now were dark and silent, and most of the day’s celebrants were asleep, or lying drunk in the gutter. For the moment, their bloodlust had been sated.