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

an uncouth Corsican accent (which at the time I was unable to identify as such), traces that grew stronger when the man be-came excited, as he certainly did on the night when we first met. His physical stature was unimpressive, though his poise and energy made him seem bigger than he was.

      He told me, with an absolute conviction, just how effective a dozen cannon would have been—no, even as few as four or five—only a few hours earlier, in repelling the mob’s assault upon the palace and its grounds. He spoke as one assuming an inarguable right to hold a professional opinion in the matter. I soon discovered that my new acquaintance had been in recent months an officer at the front, defending a confused and beleaguered France against an Austrian incursion. Anyone who might doubt my veracity regarding this encounter is advised to consult the history books, which now and then do get things right. It’s well documented that Major Bonaparte watched the August 10, 1792, massacre at the palace of the Tuileries from a safe spot—but our spot was not all that safe, nor did he ever stand, as is sometimes claimed, in a shop window.

      I can testify—if anyone in my readers’ century has lingering doubts—that Napoleon Bonaparte had a very convincing way about him; before I had been with the man five minutes, I was wishing that I had been able to employ him as a general in my old, breathing days, when the command of armies had been one of my chief concerns. Then, as he talked on, my own viewpoint gradually shifted; in another five minutes I was wishing that I could have served in some army under his command.

      He told me that he had been in Paris since May, chafing at the delays of the new bureaucracy (at least as capriciously stupid as the old) while being considered by the National Assembly for one post or another, and I believe he mentioned that he was staying at the Hotel de Cherbourg.

      Still, my senses were by far the keener, and suddenly I raised my head. “But it appears that the action is moving on.” The bulk of the distant mob was again in motion, fitful and mindless, like a swarm of bees, leaving a litter of mangled bodies in its wake. “Are we to follow?”

      He surveyed the scene, hands clasped behind his back, then nodded decisively. “There may be something of value to be learned. If you will follow me, M’sieu Corday?”

Chapter Nine

      My new companion had a way of putting questions that made them more compelling than direct orders from any ordinary man.

      And I had no reason to decline the invitation. Stubbornly I remained determined not to leave the vicinity of the palace as long as the instinctive feeling persisted that my brother was somewhere nearby. So much spilled blood would have drawn him almost irresistibly, I thought, were he anywhere within miles of the scene. I felt sure Radu was somehow involved in the slaughter going on across the street. Or, if not actually on the scene as yet, he was likely to show up at any moment. I resolved to stay, even if this meant having to risk some sharp discomfort from the sun. If necessary I could get through the remainder of the bright day with the help of my hat and the garden’s numerous trees, a great many of which were still sufficiently intact to offer shade.

      They were no longer as numerous as they had been, many having been hacked down to satisfy the general appetite for destruction. The gunfire had been desultory for some time, and eventually died away altogether. But the screams of bloodlust and of terror continued sporadically, hour after hour for the rest of the day and even, with lesser frequency, into the night. The Swiss Guards had quickly ceased to exist as a fighting force, and now, for the short balance of their miserable lives, found themselves ideally situated to play the role of victims, scapegoats for several hundred years of oppression in a country few of them had even seen until six months ago.

* * *

      At this point I believed it possible that the king and queen of France remained in the palace and were hiding with their two children somewhere within that labyrinth of corridors and rooms. Most of the people in Paris still thought so, and earlier in the day most people had been right. But later, by the time I arrived on the scene, the royal family, opting for a kind of protective custody that almost amounted to arrest, had gone to join the Assembly.

      As we began to follow the mob, I asked Bonaparte if the royal family were still in residence, and he declared decisively, on what basis I never learned, that they were not.

      When I inquired of him, tentatively, if he was a monarchist, he smiled and remarked: “France is less suited for democracy than a good many other countries.”

      And once Bonaparte felt sure that I was something of an unreconstructed monarchist myself, or at least no agent of the new regime, he related the story of the day’s earlier events, as he had been able to piece it together.

* * *

      In the early morning of that same day, King Louis had felt sufficiently confident in the loyalty of his troops to call them out into the heavily fortified courtyard of the palace for a review. The Swiss Guards cheered him boldly, but the Parisian National Guard, present in greater numbers, were in a sullen mood. Now and then a cry of  “Vive la Nation” rose from their ranks.

      Only a few hours later, serious fighting had broken out.

      Napoleon had been able to identify a few of the individuals who played key roles in the day’s events.

      There was the Marquis de Mandat, commander of the loyal National Guard—an organization of doubtful loyalty to say the least; there was George Jacques Danton, Revolutionary leader with