The Hunger (38 page)

“What is happening?” John whispered to his neighbor, a stout man who smelled of garlic.

The man’s eyes were riveted upon the tightening ropes, but he said, “They are removing Madame la Guillotine to the Place des Grèves.”

The huge machine tipped to one side. “Out of the way, there!” a man who must be a foreman called. “Gendarme! Keep those people back.” The guillotine was being laid onto a platform set with huge wheels. Sturdy Percherons in harness stood ready to haul it.

The crowd held its breath. The wood creaked in protest. Ropes from the opposite side now tightened as men took the weight of the giant machine and let it down slowly.

“Why?” John asked as he watched all his hopes for tonight tilt toward despair.

“Fanueille is having some woman executed on Sunday. We have not had a woman executed since the emperor took control from the Committee.”

Fanueille? A woman? “What woman?” John asked sharply. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t.

“Some red-haired foreigner, I heard,” John’s neighbor to his left said knowingly. He wore an apron that smelled of fish. “A spy for England.”

John’s stomach dropped to his feet. He did not need to run through all the agents he knew who spied for England. There was no red-haired woman among them. “Where . . . where is she being held?” he finally croaked.

“The Conciergerie,” the garlic man said as the guillotine was eased onto the wheeled platform. It came to rest with a thud that shook the ground itself. A cheer rose from the crowd.

“They haven’t moved Madame for an execution since . . . since the king, I think, when she stood over in the Place de la Revolution. This one must be important.” Men began to lever the huge timbers of the guillotine onto the cart, while others pulled on the ropes from the other end.

“I hear they don’t want to bring her all the way here from the Conciergerie. She’s so beautiful, they’re afraid the crowds will rush the tumbrel.”

“Then why not move her closer?” the fishmonger asked.

John stayed to hear no more. He whirled into the fringes of the crowd now gathering behind him to follow the progress of the instrument down the Rue du Trône.

Beatrix was locked in the Conciergerie. And Asharti was going to execute her Sunday.

John slid across the Pont au Change toward the Conciergerie on the lie de la Cité. Below him the river Seine rolled in massive unconcern. There were few abroad now. The great clock in the Tour de l’Horloge ahead struck one. God-fearing people were asleep, if not the idle rich. The smell of tar and refuse where the water slapped the quay was almost sickening. Above him, the stone of the Conciergerie loomed, impenetrable. How was he to get in?

Get in he must. He had put away his terrible resolve. He could afford the luxury of killing himself at some later date. For now, he could spare nothing of the adamantine will he needed to free Beatrix. Her centuries-old connection with Asharti had not spared her Asharti’s wrath. His mouth was dry, knowing Asharti could be somewhere near. Fear churned in his belly. He had been in dire situations before and his courage had never yet failed him. He prayed it did not fail him now. He could not leave Beatrix to her fate, no matter the cost.

So, dry mouth and queasy belly or no, he turned right down the Quai de l’Horloge. Guards stalked in front of the arched gates. He drifted past. What he could not make out was how Asharti was holding Beatrix. Why did Beatrix not—what did she call it?—translocate? There must be something else to this . . . what was it, magic? Skill?
Whatever it was, he did not understand it. That was obvious. Unless Beatrix was hurt, and that was why she could not draw the darkness. His stomach heaved. What could hurt one who could heal like that? Yet something was wrong. Beatrix was imprisoned. Could it be she was weak because she had given him blood? The breath he sucked in was almost painful with guilt.

All right. She might be imprisoned because she was weak. And that might be his fault. It must only harden his resolve. Now how to find her in the midst of all this stone? The bureaucrats of Bonaparte’s regime held sway behind the grand façade that faced the Seine, silent with night above him. Would she be in the dungeons? That’s where most prisoners were held. But Marie Antoinette had gone to her death from a cell that looked out on a little courtyard. Rumor had it the queen still walked there. Some said you could hear her screams. Beatrix could be there as well. How could he find her? He turned into Rue de l’Harlay their left onto Quai des Orefevres.

The street was quiet. No guards here. There were some high window arches several stories up, but the windows themselves were hatched with metal bars. Even if he could reach them and use his new strength to wrench out the bars, the endeavor was likely to be noisy.

He glanced down the endless stone wall, and peered again up into the night to where the gray rock disappeared against the black sky. Very well. There was one way inside that would attract no attention at all. He took a breath and blew it out.

He bowed his head.
Companion!
The surge of power along his veins startled him. Was it called so easily? It was almost as though he was speaking to himself. He remembered Beatrix saying that two were one, that he would never be alone again. Perhaps he
was
speaking to himself. He steeled himself against that thought. Beatrix needed him.
Companion, come to me
. A red film oozed
over his vision. He tried not to panic.
Bring enough power for the darkness
. The vibration of life inside him grew. He began to throb all over, until the throb was almost pain. Darkness whirled around him until even the stone of the Conciergerie wall was enveloped in black. A keening sounded somewhere as the vibrations shrieked up the scale. It was coming from his throat. A stab of pain thrust through him. It was as though he was turning inside out.

Then it was gone, pain, vibrations, shrieking, everything. Darkness washed from him like a rain shower, until it was a shrinking puddle on the floor . . . of where? He looked around, disoriented. He was in a small, dark room. The smell of blood almost gagged him. Dark amorphous shapes swayed in the darkness around him. Heart in his mouth, he put out a hand to the nearest shape, and met cool slickness. It swung away with the creak of a chain. For a single moment he could not imagine what horror he might be touching. Then he realized. It was a carcass. He was in a meat locker. He took a breath. A meat locker to feed the prisoners, or the bureaucrats, or both. That was all.

Now to find Beatrix. He heard voices somewhere. A slit of dim light at floor level showed him the door. The lock on the outside was no match for his strength. The metal gave a single shriek and yielded. He stopped still and waited, but the voices carried on.

He slipped into a hall with other wooden doors along it. Root cellars, dairy room, a curing room by the smells. At the far end of the hall was an archway. He slid down the corridor, back pressed against the side. He peered through the arch down another corridor. At the end another arch spilled brighter light. The voices beyond were clear now.

“Baking bread in the middle of the night!” a voice like a raven’s caw said with disgust. “What is this world coming to?”

Another laughed with a croak that dissolved in coughing. She hacked and then continued. “Who cares? They pay well for us to be here at this hour.”

“They better pay, for me to go up there, with all them red eyes glowing from dark corners. Eyes o’ the dead, is what I says.” This from the one who cackled like a bird.

“It’s your turn to go, Leesi.” The coughing one sputtered. “I took up water earlier.”

An idea began to take shape in John’s mind. These women knew where Beatrix was. They were allowed to see her, if only to give her food and water.

“I feel sorry for her, so beautiful and so sad.” This from a gentle female voice. “What could she have done that she should have her head cut off for it?”

“Me, I thought we put that nonsense behind us, killin’ everything what moved.”

“You two are squeamish old maids. Now, how about a nice fish pie for the second remove? At least the minister of justice appreciates a body’s effort.”

“That pig . . .”

Three women who had access to Beatrix. Two at least were souls hardened to working in a prison. Would they help? But he had always trusted to his luck and used the material at hand. And how else would he find her?

He stepped through the lighted doorway into a huge stone kitchen of the medieval kind, with gaping hearths as tall as a man and wooden tables on which rising loaves sat in neat rows. The room was filled with the smell of yeast and salt, lard, and smoke from the fire.

Three women gasped. One grabbed for a butcher knife. “Who are you?” the stout old woman with the voice like a crow screeched. Her jowls jiggled as she waved the knife.

“How did you get in here?” the young girl echoed, frightened.

“Whoa,” John said, palms out, as the third woman, a
grizzled crone with a thin, corded neck and veins like ropes over her knobby hands rose from a table where she had been scratching a list onto rough sheets of paper. “I mean you no harm.” He backed against the wall by the door. He knew he looked disheveled and probably wild-eyed, but that might work to his advantage. “I come on an errand of love.”

Three sets of brows drew together. “Love,” the stout one jeered.

“My betrothed, Beatrix, has red hair.”

“Oh,” the young one gasped. “Her!”

“You cain’t do no good here, boy,” the old woman with the pen said, kind under her rough tone. “Her head’s in the basket Sunday.”

“You’ll never get her out, if that’s what’s in your mind,” the stout one rasped.

“Is it so hopeless?” He let his shoulders sag as he examined their faces.

The stout one harrumphed. “They got five o’ them creatures guarding her anytime.”

Five of Asharti’s vampires? Did they keep Beatrix imprisoned with sheer numbers? That’s what they meant by red eyes in every corner.

“Ghosts, I says. You cain’t fight ghosts.” The crone punctuated her point with her quill.

Real hopelessness closed in around his soul. He couldn’t afford that. If only he could talk to Beatrix, she might be able to tell him how he could help her. He glanced up at the three faces. Two held pity, one contempt. “Then all I ask is to be able to declare my love for her one last time. Perhaps it will give her strength in her final . . .” He let his eyes fill. It wasn’t hard.

“You don’t guess they’ll just let you walk up to the cell and start recitin’ poetry nor nothing, do you?” The stout one chuffed her disdain. As John watched she slipped a floured wooden paddle under two loaves of bread and
swung round to slide them into a narrow, arched oven. She stirred the coals underneath with a poker until they emitted angry sparks.

He looked around, desperate. It was an act, but in his belly it was strangely real. “Let me write my love with your paper and quill, and . . . and you can bake it into the bread you take her.”

“I guess as how not!” the stout one barked. “You want to get us in trouble?”

But the other two were wavering. It was just the kind of gesture that would appeal to whatever romantic sentiment working in a place like this hadn’t ground out of them. “Whoever takes it up, say, ‘Pay special attention to the bread, my lady, it was baked with love.’ That’s all you have to do. She’ll know. She’ll be discreet. You won’t be caught.”

“I’ll take it up,” the young one blurted. “I’ll say that.”

The old woman tapped her lips with one finger. The stout one turned. “You’ll take my turn tonight, Marie? And the next?”

The young girl swallowed and nodded.

“I don’t go again until . . .” The stout one counted on her fingers. “I don’t go up again at all.” A gap-toothed grin spread across her face. “I’ll bake your bread.” She hustled over to John. “You just sit down, young man, and write out your poetry pretty. Give him your pen, Jeaunty.”

“She can write back to me on the reverse.”

“You’re not baking my quill inside a loaf,” the old woman protested.

“I think someone would notice a quill,” the young girl offered, hesitant.

John glanced around. A huge bowl of fruit sat on one table, and a bunch of grapes on a battered tin plate along with a wedge of cheese. “Are you taking her that plate?”

The young girl nodded.

“Why don’t you give her one of those pomegranates?”

“Ink, like. I see. But what will she write with?” the old crone asked, uncertainly.

“With a fingernail of course . . .” John said as he mended the quill with a paring knife. “And you will show me to the yard below her cell, and she will let it flutter down to me.” He looked up at the stone ceiling darkened with soot. “It may be the last I will have of her.” God, he hoped this tenuous scheme would work. It all depended upon Beatrix.

The young girl let out a sob.

“My first was hanged,” the old crone muttered. “I wisht I had some last word from him. I’ll take you to the yard.” Then she blew her nose in her apron.

Now, please Lord, let Asharti not be guarding her. He was putting himself in Asharti’s way again. And the thought made him tremble.

Twenty-One

Beatrix huddled in a corner as far from the window to the courtyard as she could get. It was dark now but all day the light through the window had tortured her. True, she had her blue spectacles from the reticule and her cloak. And she crouched in a corner out of the direct sunlight. But the general brightness sent prickles of pain along her skin. That was bearable for the short forays into sunlight sometimes necessary in normal times, but after long hours it became almost insupportable.

Her captors stayed well out of the light, lurking in the darkened cells adjacent or in the corridor. Faceless and silent, they only added to the unreality of her situation. She tried periodically to draw her power, testing the limits of her captors. But even the attempt alerted them and their eyes glowed brighter and her power wouldn’t come.

She had been unable to sleep, of course. She had refused all food, not from fear of poison, but from lack of appetite. As her fate became more real and more inevitable, she came to think that perhaps it held an answer to her long struggle against a final journey to Mirso. Asharti was not killing her, but setting her free.