A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9), Fred Saberhagen [some good books to read TXT] 📗

kept busy with what was, as I thought, some kind of would-be magical hocus-pocus with the freshly severed head in her lap. Illumination from the bright Argand lamp bathed the sallow skin, the half-exposed teeth (somehow their whiteness was surprising, suggesting health), gray lips, and matted hair.

      Meanwhile her younger assistant, who so far had paid me little heed, was digging methodically through the grisly pile of stiffened, chilling flesh, inspecting and discarding, one after another, the heads that she discovered. A few she chose and put down on the ground in a row, sluicing them with water from a pail to wash away the earth and blood from their faces, to get a better look at them. At last she seemed to find a head she definitely wanted, and set it aside, with a little murmur of satisfaction.

      Meanwhile the older woman worked on. Her skilled technician’s fingers, dipped in what appeared to be clear oil, carried on a deft anointing of the skin of the dead face which she was cradling. I caught the dim flash of a small needle in the lamplight. The eyelids had already been sewn shut, just a little tuck in each would do, and now the lips, which at one corner of the mouth still tended to sag open.

      Deftly her young fingers smeared a thin layer of clay over the fringe of hair around the dead face. The man, whatever his name, had been clean-shaven, rather handsome, with a receding hairline.

      That’s good,” his attendant muttered to herself. The less hair the better; it only gets in the way.”

      In the way of what? I wondered, but indolently did not pursue the question.

      The younger woman, straightening her back, remarked: “They say the beard keeps on growing after death.”

      I looked at her, and found her comely. But at the moment I felt no great hunger. Casually I observed: “They say many things which are not so.”

* * *

      Though I lingered near the women, I was not watching their work very keenly. The scene, with its ghoulish pair, reminded me of my first encounter, hundred of years earlier, with Constantia, who as a mere breathing girl had been aching to try her hand at witchcraft, not at all afraid to turn up some supposed wizard’s grave. Also of several other episodes, involving would-be witches and magicians, which I had observed down through the centuries. Long ago I had realized that not one in ten of the folk who thought themselves adept in those dark practices were actually in contact with any powers beyond those generated in their own sick minds.

      The two women now before me seemed perfect examples of such self-delusion. But at least their magical paraphernalia struck me as unique. They were using a device of a good size and shape to fit into a hatbox, containing some kind of blocks, screws, and clamps to grip a detached human head and hold it in place, face uppermost, upon one woman’s lap, while she and her fellow technician worked.

      I assumed, without giving the matter any real thought, that the decorations on the hatbox were some kind of amateurish magical symbols.

      Only one face, the dead one, that of some poor breather who would breathe no more, was in full light, while the live countenances of the two women remained in shadow.

* * * * * *

      What would the attitude of the Revolutionary authorities be toward witchcraft, satanism? The question was seldom asked openly but there can be no doubt that those fanatics were generally against black magic; the devil no less than God was a rival authority, jealously demanding allegiance. Another dreadful superstition. On the other hand, he would have offered an ally against all churches, synagogues, and mosques.

      I have sometimes wondered whether it might have been some hint, or even stronger indication, of that darker worship showing itself among his colleagues, which induced Robespierre to formulate his cult of the Supreme Being—but that was to come later.

* * *

      Whose face were the women working on? It was only logical for me to satisfy my curiosity by asking. They murmured something, being evasive; I did not press the point.

       After a thin coating of oil had been applied to the subject’s face, it was time for the plaster of Paris, the latter swiftly mixed in a handy bowl or basin.

      They had recently been working on a woman’s head, which now lay discarded and forgotten again, and the process suggested some ghastly beautician’s work. Thinking back a century or two, I recalled having seen breathing women subject themselves to mudpacks and the like.

      To me the younger of the two breathing women, who had not spoken a word to me as yet, was the more attractive and therefore the more interesting. Though her face remained in shadow, as seemed only fitting for one engaged in black magician’s work, darkness gave no protection against inspection by a vampire’s eyes. Hers was a striking face that stayed easily in my memory. As did her voice.

      But at the time, my thoughts preoccupied with other matters, I didn’t even bother to learn her name. That would come later…

      “I have no need to ask what you are doing,” I remarked. In this, as we shall see, I blundered seriously on the side of overconfidence. I thought I knew essentially what was going on, though some of the details were unique in my experience, strange enough to make me curious. Whatever thoughts I had of the two women in that hour were confined to the universe of magic, and of evil. In my defense, I can only plead that ascribing such motives to whomever I encountered in that place, and at that time, was a natural mistake.

      She was unperturbed by my question. “We have perfectly valid business here, citizen. Have you?”

      “It is the business of my life.”

      “Your home lies near here?”

      “Very near.” I gestured vaguely. “It is at most times a peaceful neighborhood.”

Chapter Seven

      Generally the Radcliffes’ masked guardians spoke to