Immortal Muse (36 page)

“You're a vile, awful creature,” Marie-Anne spat.

“I'm sure you think so, my dear,” he replied calmly. “You probably always thought so—I'll admit that I did enjoy the beatings I gave you so long ago, too, if not in the same way, and killing Provost Marcel with my spell was sweet as well. But it was your elixir that finished the task.
That
made me the way I am;
you
made me the way I am. The elixir changed me, as it changed you—as it would change anyone, I know. Have you figured out how to perfect it yet, Perenelle? Have you given it to anyone else?”

She shook her head, but she was remembering her cat Verdette.

“That's a shame,” he said. “That would be an interesting experiment—if only to see how much pain and torture such a being can endure, and to see if perhaps I can find a way to actually kill them.”

Marie-Anne shivered, hearing the eerily calm voice discussing such a horror. “You
can
do that,” she told him. “You can have me. Let Antoine go; take me.”

He laughed then, leaning back hard against his chair. “I don't mind killing mortals,” he said. “That's all they're really good for—feeding me with their pain and the sweet, wonderful taste of their eventual passing. But you and me . . . I
like
this, Perenelle. I like coming across you every now and then. You're a fine feast that I love having every so many decades, but a steady diet of you . . .” He shook his head. “No. It's tempting, but I don't want that. I hate you, Perenelle, and I know that you hate me in return. Our mutual hate nourishes and sustains me; if you were gone, that would be lost to me. Besides, one day you
will
perfect the elixir, and then I'll take that from you, too.”

He looked at her with such hunger and ferocity that she pushed her chair back from the table. “Antoine?”

“Oh, he'll die.” Nicolas shrugged. “His fate's already settled. I'll be there to taste his death, and to taste the fury and loathing that you'll give me as a result. It will be such a doubled pleasure.”

“You're a monster.”

“In your eyes, perhaps. But the truth is that I'm only doing what I need to do to live, just as you are. If that's a monstrosity, then everyone is a monster, yourself included.”

“If Antoine dies, I'll find a way to bring you down,” she told him. “I'll find a way to kill you, and I'll send you to hell.”

He laughed again. “You've become so terribly dramatic, my dear. Do whatever you want. If you want to find me, all you need to do is go to wherever there's pain and turmoil and death. I'll be there, waiting for you.” He drained the wine in his glass. “And now I have affairs of the Republic to which I must attend. I need to assign a judge to Antoine's case—one who understands the verdict I have in mind.”

He pushed his chair back and rose, taking his coat and hat from their hook on the tavern wall. He brought the cloak over his shoulder. “If you're hungry, the food here's excellent,” he said. “Have the waiter order you whatever you like—tell him to put it on my account. It was good seeing you again, Perenelle. I very much look forward to our future meetings.”

With that, he bowed to her and placed his hat on his head. He turned, gesturing to the men at the neighboring table. She could have shot him then, could have discharged the pistol she carried with her, leaving him twisting in pain on the floorboards. She could have cast a vial at him, speaking a spell word so that the chemicals inside bloomed into flames to char and blacken his flesh.

But none of that would change anything. In a few minutes, a few hours, a few days or weeks or months at worst, he would be whole and unhurt again.

She couldn't stop him.

She watched him leave the tavern, safely in the midst of his companions.

 * * * 

Antoine's eventual trial before the Tribunal didn't take place until late April, but its outcome was certain from the moment it began. The judge refused to listen to Marie-Anne's appeal to spare Antoine's life so that he might be allowed to continue his experiments. “The Republic needs neither scientists nor chemists; the course of justice cannot be delayed,” the judge said, after glancing once at the papers in front of him. No witnesses had been called; none, she knew, were necessary. “The sentence will be carried out in ten days.” And with that, he gestured for Antoine to be taken away.

Marie-Anne went to see Antoine that night. The air of the prison was chill and damp; she could hear Antoine coughing as the guard escorted her to his cell. “A few minutes only,” he told Marie-Anne as she pressed the coins of the necessary bribe into the guard's hand and Antoine came forward from the dark, fetid recesses of the small cell.

“You shouldn't have come,” he told her as the guard left them. She could hear the stirring of the other prisoners in the nearby cells, could feel their gazes on the two of them. Antoine looked horrible: thin and emaciated, his hair matted to his skull and bruises mottling his face and arms. He had told her previously that he was questioned and beaten irregularly, that Robespierre sometimes attended the interrogations; it appeared that he'd experienced another beating since the travesty of his trial. She took his hand through the bars, pressing her face against the cold, rusted iron to kiss him.

“Don't give up hope yet,” she told him. “You're well-loved, my darling. There are those who are outraged at this verdict, and they've told me that they'll make their voices heard.”

He nodded, but she saw the resignation in his eyes, bloodshot and dull. She wondered if he'd heard the lie in her voice: she had no hope now that anyone could change the verdict, knowing who Robespierre actually was. “Thank you,” he said, and she saw that he was missing teeth, slurring his words. The fingers clutching hers were little more than flesh draped over bone, the ligaments visible underneath. “The laboratory? My notes?”

She shook her head. “Everything's been confiscated by the state, months ago: our house, the laboratories, all of our notes. Everything. It's all gone, I'm afraid. I didn't want to tell you.”

He nodded again, as if he'd expected the news. There was no change in his expression, and she knew then how deep his despair had become, and how hopeless he felt. It steeled her resolve.

She'd thought for a long time about this. Expecting this, she'd burned the notes she had on the elixir—she didn't want Nicolas to have them. She made copies for herself and placed them where she could retrieve them at some later date, but left out the critical element: the blood that made the elixir work. That vital ingredient she would keep to herself. She wouldn't let Nicolas know that. Ever.

With the laboratories intact, she might have been able to do more. She might have been able to release him from Porte Libre as she'd once released herself from her Roman prison, though Porte Libre was far better guarded, and she had no idea where they could hide afterward. But it didn't matter; in the day following Antoine's arrest, their laboratories had been destroyed, the chemical stores and equipment taken away. Everything. Everything save one.

In her cloak, nestled in an inner pocket, was the blue vial. She'd managed to save that.

“We don't have long,” she whispered to him urgently. “Do you trust me?” She passed him the blue bottle. “Drink this,” she told him.

He stared at the bottle. “Marie-Anne, are things truly this desperate?”

She realized then that he thought the vial contained a poison, that she wanted him to commit suicide rather than face the guillotine. “You don't understand. This is to keep you alive, Antoine—no matter what happens.” She could see the confusion in his face. “Trust me,” she told him again. “Please.”

He uncapped the vial. “I do trust you,” he said, “no matter what this is.” He upended the vial into his mouth; she saw his throat move as he swallowed. “Bitter,” he said, grimacing. “And it burns all through me . . .” His voice cut off as he gasped and cried out in sudden pain, his mouth a wide oval, his eyes nearly as wide. She could see changes rippling through his body, his hair losing the gray it had acquired, his receding hairline surging forward like a rushing tide over his forehead, the lines of his face smoothing, his back straightening. He grunted, as much in wonder as in pain, holding his hands in front of his face: a young man's hands, the skin elastic and smooth. As she watched, the transformation ended, and his breathing became more regular and even, though he continued to stare at his hands. “Marie-Anne?” he asked, a dozen questions held in the query of her name.

“Look at me, Antoine,” she said, whispering so that none of the others could hear her. “Look at me with someone else's eyes. Haven't you ever wondered why I haven't changed all that much over the years of our marriage? Haven't you heard people say how young I still looked, with a bit of puzzlement or even jealousy in their voices? Antoine,
I don't age.
I'm far, far older than you would believe if I told you. And my body heals itself: shoot me, cut my throat with a knife, snap my neck—none of that will end my life. I've just given you the same gift.”
But the elixir will also change you, as it did me and as it did Nicolas and Verdette. I don't know how, but it will. The elixir will demand an eternal payment for what it gives; for that, whatever it will be, I can only ask for your forgiveness.

She didn't tell him that. He would find out, soon enough.

“This is nonsense,” he blustered, his eyes wild, though he touched his face in wonderment. “A fantasy. Even if it were true, why would you do this, when in a few days . . .” He couldn't speak the rest.

“I told you,” she said. “Stab me, shoot me, and
I don't die
. And neither will you, my love. Neither will you.” She patted his hand. “I know you don't believe me, but trust me.”

Even as she heard the metallic jingle of the jailer's keys, she saw hope bloom in his eyes, even in the darkness of the cell. She kissed him again—his lips, young and pliant—as the guard entered the corridor for his cell and grunted at her.

“I have to go now,” she said. “Trust me, Antoine. Believe in this. You will not die.”

 * * * 

It was the 8th of May, 1794. She could not think of it as 19 Floréal, Year II.

The designation hardly mattered. No matter what it was called, this was the day she was to watch her husband lose his head. Even knowing that Antoine had taken the elixir, she found herself frightened. The guillotine: this was a different kind of death than any she'd experienced.

Joseph Louis Lagrange, alone of their friends, stood with her in the thin gathering around the Place de la Révolution. At the beginning of Robespierre's purge of anyone who might be against him, there had been enormous crowds for the executions, and the guillotine had become the favorite entertainment of the masses. The “People's Avenger,” they called it, or “Madame Guillotine,” or “The National Razor”—as noble heads fell and the crowds jeered and cheered. People would bring their children, placing them on their shoulders so they could watch the blade fall and see the heads tumble away. But as the grisly violence of the Reign of Terror lengthened, as untold thousands fell under the blade, it was no longer just the nobility, but the intellectuals, the politicians, and even the commoners and prostitutes who were executed in a continuing, endless bloodbath.

Even the spectacle of public death became boring. The crowds had begun to wane.

Marie-Anne and Lagrange, bundled in cloaks against recognition, approached the Place. Vendors called out to them, waving pieces of parchment with the names of the condemned printed on them as a program. There were a few hundred rather than thousands of people around the bloodstained device this morning. “Are you certain you want to be here, Madame?” Lagrange asked her. Marie-Anne had stopped at the edge of the crowd as the shadow of the guillotine touched her and sun sparked from the angled blade. “If you wish, walk away. No one would blame you in the slightest, Antoine least of all. Take a carriage and return to your house. I will stay as your witness and report back to you. No wife should have to see her husband suffer this.”

“No,” she told him. “I want Antoine to see that I'm here.” She watched: as the long list of prisoners was called out one by one; as they were brought onto the platform; as they knelt down and their heads were placed on the blood-spattered board; as the blade was winched up and released, falling in an instant; as the severed, dripping heads were held up to the crowd's roaring approval.

It sickened her, watching this, knowing that Antoine would soon experience the same fate. And she wondered, as well, what the guillotine would do to Antoine or her, if even an immortal body could survive such terrible abuse.

Even as the thought passed in her mind, she heard Antoine's name called out. He ascended the steps to the platform, his hands tied behind him, his hair cropped short and the collar of his shirt loose. A murmur that quickly became a roar came from the crowd: Robespierre himself escorted Antoine, holding him by the arm. She saw Antoine look out over the crowd, saw him recognize her and give her a faint, brave smile. Nicolas saw her too, and his smile was broad and mocking. He pointed toward her, then made a gesture as if swallowing something from a cup or bottle.
He knows. He knows I gave him the elixir . . .
“We are conducting an experiment today,” he said aloud, his voice faint over that of the crowd. “We shall discover if science can defeat the guillotine.”

Nicolas helped Antoine to kneel down, and as he straightened again, he bowed in Marie-Anne's direction. Antoine's gaze was still on her as well; he must have seen her hands fly to her face in shock. But the executioner pushed Antoine's head down into the stock, then lowered the top board.

The blade began its agonizing, final rise.