The Silver Blade

  The devil’s dog, the hound of hell, had come to take his master home.

  Kalliovski’s screams were drowned by the singing of the Seven Sisters Macabre, their ethereal voices ringing out:

  ‘Damask and death.

  Velvet and violence.

  Brocade and blood.’

  Still he fought with all that was left of his strength. His skeleton arm appeared, his hand clutched at Milkeye’s ankle. Like a madman he tried to kick himself free of his master, but to no avail. He was pulled closer and closer to the edge. As he stood tottering on the brink, one of the Seven Sisters Macabre pushed him over.

  The floor started to whirl again.

  Yann held on tightly to Sido as the bony walls began to crumble. He knew they had to escape before the whole edifice collapsed.

  One of the Sisters put a hand out to stop him. ‘Only you can free us,’ she whispered. ‘Your survival depends on it.’

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Call Balthazar.’

  Yann whistled for the dog, fearful that he was too late.

  Then Balthazer emerged, no longer a monster, but the ghost of the puppy he had once been. Wagging his tail, he leaped up at Yann, and then jumped with joy at each of the Seven Sisters Macabre. Out of their battered and tortured carcasses emerged the ghosts of seven beautiful women, at long last set free, at long last at peace.

  ‘Come with us,’ they beckoned.

  Yann was conscious of a blinding light. Then he and Sido were in a meadow full of poppies, the Seven Sisters running through the tall grasses, laughing, chasing Balthazar towards the poplar trees.

  Their voices sang out ‘We are birds, we are free …’

  Yann had no memory of how he got back to the theatre. It was Basco, who seeing what he thought were two ghosts, raised the alarm. Tetu came running down the stairs, a sword in his hand, to see Yann and Sido, covered in dust. At Sido’s neck was the shell of the shells.

  That July morning a building in the rue des Couteaux collapsed into the catacombs. It had happened before; no doubt it would happen again. This time the disaster took only one shop. No one was quite sure how many were buried in the rubble. It was days later that they found the body of Serreto.

  Chapter Thirty

  Didier couldn’t stand the noise of the prison. All night long it sounded like some grotesque engine fuelled by fear. It gurgled, its belly rumbling, as if it were by degrees digesting its inmates. Just when he felt he had the measure of the infernal racket he was wrong-footed by the voice of a woman singing. Her song rose, to be caught like a butterfly in an iron net.

  In his windowless cell with no light, all Didier had for company were these voices. He sat upright on the edge of his wooden bed refusing sleep. It wasn’t worth it; after all he would be sent to his eternal rest soon enough.

  At six in the morning, his cell was beginning to feel hot and airless. The iron grille in the door slid open and a clerk with ink-stained fingers pushed through a piece of paper with his indictment.

  ‘Your trial’s this afternoon.’

  Didier didn’t bother to try to read it. He knew it was his death sentence.

  The grille in the door still being open, he shouted for a guard. A man came limping, dragging his leg behind him. He had a kinder face than his fellow jailers.

  ‘What is it, citizen?’

  Didier handed him some money.

  ‘Can you find out what’s happened to a young man by the name of Yann Margoza? He was arrested with me last night.’

  ‘Keep your money,’ said the guard, and Didier thought he was going to walk away. Instead he said, ‘Yann Margoza? That name rings a bell. I once came across a lad with that name, working with a dwarf, if I remember correctly?’

  ‘Perhaps. Why?’ replied Didier, seeing a ray of hope. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes and no. He never said his name, but afterwards, I made enquiries.’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘It was in the great winter of ‘eighty-nine. Back then I was a coachman. I worked for the Vicomtesse de Lisle. I gave a lad and a dwarf a lift back to Paris from the old de Villeduval estate. Saved my life, that boy did. I often wonder what happened to them two. Honourable. Not a word you can use much these days, but that’s what those two gypsies were. Honourable.’

  ‘That’s Yann Margoza all right. How did he save your life?’

  ‘The horses took fright on an icy road. Fireworks made them bolt. I thought we’d had it. The lad climbed down from the carriage, as bold as brass, and managed to mount one of the horses. He whispered into their ears, and blow me down if they didn’t come to a halt. Yes, I tell you, I’d be a dead man if it weren’t for Yann Margoza.’

  ‘Will you find out if he’s here?’ asked Didier.

  ‘Leave it with me. My name’s Dufort.’

  At half-past two the door to Didier’s cell was opened. He was taken through the wicket gates to a courtyard where fourteen prisoners were already walking up and down, a rag, tag and bobtail collection of men. Ten were young wags, well dressed and well fed. They swanked around, bolstering themselves with fighting talk, each telling the other that he was innocent.

  ‘I am a true revolutionary,’ said one.

  ‘We’ll be in Moet’s Tavern before the day is done,’ said another.

  ‘I shall be in my mistress’s arms before the night is through,’ said a third.

  Didier, always an observer, watched as one of their party boasted of what he would do when called before the Public Prosecutor.

  ‘After all,’ he added, ‘it was I who designed the playing cards for the Republic.’

  The three priests took no notice of the young dilettantes. Neither did a man who looked mad, his beard white, almost down to his feet, with bits of straw and food in it, his clothes torn and tattered.

  Didier breathed in the fresh air, tilting up his head, drawing down the sky. The prison courtyard was surrounded on all sides by the Conciergerie walls and the gothic towers of the Palace of Justice, yet he could see a cockade of white sky high above, and he watched the swallows swooping, wishing with all his being that he too might sprout wings and fly.

  Later that morning Didier, chained to his fellow prisoners, waited in the corridor. Fifteen prisoners in all, to be seen by the judge in small groups. Didier, his back against the stone wall, waited for the first five to come out.

  Dufort sidled up to him. ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘But he must be,’ said Didier.

  ‘A man took him away last night. Where to, they wouldn’t say.’

  Dufort was interrupted by the sergeant. ‘What are you doing, talking to the prisoner?’

  Dufort stood to attention. He sighed, looking along the line of men left waiting to be sent for trial. Were any of them guilty? He thought back to the days when he had worked for the Viscountess. She would turn in her grave if she could see her old Dufort a guard in this most notorious of prisons. True, she was mean, stingy, and her monkey had been a pest, yet for all that, when she died, just after the fall of the Bastille, she had left him her house to look after. As long as her monkey lived longer than four years the house would be his. That was almost five years ago and the monkey was still alive.

  Dufort was a decent man. He wondered if Yann had been transferred to another prison, or already sent to the guillotine. If that were the case he could at least do something to help the lad’s friend.

  Watching the sergeant walk away, he once more went up to Didier. ‘Where’s the dwarf?’

  ‘At the Circus of Follies in the Place de Manon.’

  Dufort had managed to get an hour off a day, pleading the needs of a child in his care. What he didn’t say was that the child was a monkey. He liked to keep an eye on the Viscount, as he called him, even though his wife was just as capable. He made a detour to the Place de Manon, arriving at the theatre, out of breath, to find it apparently abandoned. He knocked on the stage door anyway. At last it was opened by Tetu, a huge sword in his hand.

&n
bsp; ‘I’m a friend. I mean you no harm. I come from the Conciergerie. Didier told me where to find you. Please, we need to talk. My name is Dufort. I was a coachman for the Vicomtesse de Lisle.’

  Tetu looked at him, uncertain.

  ‘Do you remember? I gave you a lift to Paris from the de Villeduval chateau, in the winter before the fall of the Bastille?’

  Tetu was still studying him. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I remember you.’

  ‘Yann Margoza saved my life that night and I want to repay the debt. Is there anything I can do to help you?’

  ‘We need somewhere to hide.’

  ‘I have a house that no one will search and is safe.’ He leaned forward. ‘It’s the residence of the late Viscountess.’

  Tetu put down the sword and shook Dufort’s hand.

  Yann appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Dufort nodded. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

  Didier was in the last batch of accused to be sent before the judge, who was an imposing sight, severe in his black hat and cloak with his dark hair and eyebrows.

  ‘You,’ said the judge to the designer of cards, ‘you have a brother who is an aristocrat and an emigre.’

  ‘No, no, sir, I have no brother,’ replied the young man, seeing a glimmer of hope. There had, after all, been a misunderstanding. ‘I am an only child. I live with my mother, a widow.’

  ‘Quiet!’ boomed the judge. ‘As I said, you have a brother and a father who are both emigres and who have escaped to London, working for the British government.’

  The young man looked dumbfounded. ‘No, no, that’s not—’

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted the judge, turning his attention to the next prisoner.

  Didier had decided to say nothing. There was no justice here.

  ‘Well, mooncalf, what have you to say in your defence?’ said the judge. ‘You’ve been denounced as a traitor and a spy.’

  Seeing that Didier wasn’t in the mood to argue his case, the judge moved on with relish to the poor man with the long white beard.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘The Duc de—’

  The judge didn’t even let him finish.

  All the men were found guilty as charged.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Basco, beside himself, was hardly aware of anything as he walked blindly along the street.

  He as good as jumped out of his skin when someone grabbed his sleeve, and a man in a battered hat said, ‘Slow down, my friend.’

  ‘Yann,’ said Basco. ‘Oh, thank goodness.’

  Yann put his finger to his lips.

  ‘What has happened to Didier?’

  ‘He was found guilty along with fourteen others. He has been condemned to death. They are taking him to the Place du Trone. We must do something.’

  ‘What about Citizen Aulard?’

  ‘He’s not on today’s list,’ said Basco.

  Yann and Basco mingled with the jeering crowd across the Pont au Change, then through the rue de la Coutellerie to the Faubourg St-Antoine. It had been Robespierre who had ordered the removal of the guillotine from the Place de la Revolution to the Place du Trone.

  His excuse for its removal was that it would waken the sleepier parts of Paris to the true meaning of the terror. Those on the executioner’s tumbril had a longer, slower journey in which to contemplate the injustice of their sentences.

  Didier, staring down from the cart, was unaware of his friends in the sea of faces. He stood taller than the rest of his companions in the tumbril. Next to him was a girl who reminded Didier of a young deer, fresh-faced, her whole life before her and about to be cut short. He heard her sob and say a ‘Hail Mary’ under her breath.

  ‘I’m frightened,’ she whispered. ‘They took my mother and I can’t see which cart she’s in.’

  ‘Give the lady your seat,’ Didier said to the man sitting next to him.

  ‘What’s the point,’ he replied. ‘We’re all dead.’

  ‘Listen to me. Look at that crowd. You know why they’re jeering?’

  ‘The same reason I jeered when I went to see the guillotine. They’re grateful it’s not them.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Didier, ‘and did you shout louder when you saw a man stumble, when a woman pissed herself?’

  ‘For my sins, I did.’

  ‘And did you feel humbled when a man walked with his head held high and showed courage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then hold your head high, be proud that for the moment it’s still connected to your body, and for the sake of this young terrified girl, be a man.’

  The procession continued its agonisingly slow journey and when they reached the rue du Faubourg St-Antoine, in sight of the Bastille, Didier looked up to see the sky darkening.

  Yann and Basco had so far failed to attract his attention, and Yann was beginning to think that saving Didier might be beyond him, for the crowd was clumped together, a wall that seemed impossible to break through.

  Suddenly the sky turned black, pitch black. The gods were angry. Thunder rolled over Paris, Zeus sent lightning to rend the sky and rain fell in huge gobbets, giant spit balls that bounced and burst in small puddles. The mob, frightened by the power of the elements, hurried for shelter in doorways and shop fronts. Only Yann stood in the rain, soaking wet. Taking off his hat, his face illuminated as lightning flashed through the sky, he opened his long pale coat, which in the eerie light was incandescent, like butterfly wings.

  Didier saw him then, silver in the storm, like an avenging angel, and his spirits rose.

  Balling his huge hand into a fist he tipped back his head. ‘I knew he wouldn’t let me down. I knew it!’ He turned to the girl. ‘Don’t give up hope. Keep praying.’

  The rain was still falling by the time the guillotine came into view. The stalwarts of the scaffold did not care about the weather, as long as heads fell as well. They had claimed their seats, waiting for the drama to begin.

  The girl’s cries could be heard loud and clear above the din of the storm as she called for her mother.

  The guards, soaked through, took their places round the tumbrils. The executioner and his two attendants examined their human cargo. The executioner enjoyed making the most of their misery, for the crowd fed off the drama of these executions. The girl was exactly the kind of rosy plum he liked to begin with. He ordered the guard to pull her out. As she clung to Didier the guard wrenched her away. Didier had tears in his eye and a lump of fury in his throat. He would willingly kill all the guards, and the executioner.

  ‘Be brave,’ he said, as the girl was taken screaming from him.

  A woman’s voice cried, ‘Odette, where is my Odette?’

  ‘Maman! Don’t let me die!’ the girl screamed, ‘Help me, someone, help me!’

  ‘Come on,’ said the guard. ‘Let’s get this young aristo executed. Bring the mother, let her watch.’

  Didier shouted to Yann, ‘Don’t worry about me, save her!’

  Basco eased himself closer to the tumbrils as the girl was brutally dragged to the scaffold, screaming, fighting and kicking for all she was worth.

  ‘Let’s see,’ one of the old hags shouted.

  The executioner tore off her hat.

  ‘Oh, she’s a piece of liquorice if ever I saw one!’ shouted one of her companions.

  The girl, still sobbing, was tied to the plank.

  The drums started to roll. The blade fell, to the screams of the mother and the cheers of the onlookers, then came to a shuddering halt, less than a metre above the girl’s head.

  Yann, throwing his voice across the boom of the thunder, shouted, ‘Set the innocent free.’

  The mob went silent, wondering what could have gone wrong.

  Yann, his head aching, held tight the threads of light, keeping the silver blade fastened in midair.

  Basco took his chance while the guards all had their heads turned towards the guillotine. He leaped on to the cart and cut the ropes tying Didier. Didier jumped down and, to a great cheer f
rom the onlookers, pulled back the plank and untied the terrified girl. Yann could see that the guards were about to fire at Didier, and he threw threads of light round them, pinning them down as Didier hoisted the girl over his shoulder. Basco, still on the tumbril, cut the ropes of the other prisoners.