A Sharpness on the Neck

'Poof, why do you worry? What have you to lose, in your situation? You don't have to understand everything, just this: The man you call Legrand considers that his honor binds him to you in loyalty, simply because you saved his life when he was in most dire need. Believe me, he is not one to forget either good deeds done to him or bad.' Constantia paused for a sigh. 'The only problem is—'

'Yes?'

The lady looked wistful. 'In earning the loyalty of Legrand, you have earned the hatred of his brother, who is almost as powerful.'

'Yes, I have heard. The man who is supposed to want to drink my blood.' He paused, rocking back and forth on his narrow prison cot, trying to get a grip on the short hair of his scalp, which was still bandaged, so he could pull it. 'Which is what you do to me. And now you have me craving to taste your blood also. I think perhaps that I am going mad!'

His companion tilted her curly head on one side and considered him carefully; 'No,' she decided. 'No, you are still a long way from madness. I know many people who are truly insane, and they are nothing like you.' She paused, considering. 'Well, not very much.'

Spinning round, Radcliffe confronted her fiercely. 'I tell you that I love Melanie!' And in that moment, when his passion for Connie had been momentarily satisfied, he experienced a burst of repentance, even of revulsion, for what he had just done.

Constantia smiled benevolently. 'But I am not jealous of what you feel for your Melanie. Is that what worries you? I am simply enjoying a good time with you.'

'What worries me is that—if what you tell me about you nosferatu is true—then, when I am changed—what will happen to her?' Philip in his desperation took another drink from the brandy bottle that was not yet emptied. 'She is so fine, so pure—' Now tears were running down his cheeks. 'Ah, I am not worthy of her!'

Connie tried to explain. But he was drinking—brandy, not blood—and not listening. And she has never been very good at explanations.

Philip's violent affair with Connie, indeed his whole acquaintance with her, lasted no more than a few days, but those few days were sufficient for our purpose. In them he lost track of time. More than enough happened, between him and Constantia, to teach Philip many things about the nature of vampires, and to afford him a real chance of becoming one.

Meanwhile Melanie was lying low, doing what she thought she could do to protect her son. She had no idea that Philip was being seduced in prison, or even that there were such creatures as vampires—except that she was ready to concede that Citizen Legrand, who had pledged his help, was no ordinary man, and in fact could do some quite extraordinary things.

Shortly after Marie had visited Radcliffe in his cell, Melanie at the museum received from the older woman a matter-of-fact report about the event. Melanie was able to take some comfort from it.

But the great question still tormented her. 'Can we really succeed in saving him?' she demanded of her cousin. 'Can there be a rescue, from that prison?'

'Why not? It is only a place, like other places. And Legrand has a scheme.' Marie, whose eyes had seen a great many things in the last few years, nodded slowly. 'I think I trust Legrand… whoever he really is.'

'Yes, I know. He is an impressive man. But the situation still terrifies me.'

Marie patted her sympathetically. 'Let us each do our part. Then, it is in the hands of the good God.'

The fate of the man she loved was not Melanie's only worry. She wondered also whether her young child, little Auguste, was ever going to bear a name other than that of a bastard. More urgently than that, she wondered whether she herself might be arrested on some charge and never see her son again.

Radu, knowing that patience and caution were essential in a conflict with his brother, made no real attempt to get at Radcliffe in his cell. He approached no closer than was necessary to sense the habitation effect which guarded the occupant.

Something of the same caution kept him from trying to approach Melanie, whom he might otherwise have attacked just to get at Vlad even more indirectly.

And then, as almost unexpected as such days often are, came the morning when the stolid workmen came for Philip Radcliffe, without fuss or fanfare, just before dawn, and Connie had to fade into the stone walls and darkness to get out of the way.

Radcliffe was once more well-fortified with strong drink, a condition that had become chronic over the last few days; and he had been affected also by Connie's careless brush with converting him to vampirism. He could only stare around him stupidly. Where was she? But it was sheer fantasy to believe that they had done the things together that he remembered. It seemed to him that he remembered drinking blood from her veins; that she had tasted his was indelibly imprinted.

In the harsh glare of outdoor daylight, dazzling after days in his dim cell, it seemed to him that he had only dreamed the presence of the gypsy girl.

By the time Philip Radcliffe was hustled out of the prison into the light of day, he had more or less reconciled himself to his fate, whatever it was going to be—to everything, in fact, but the idea that he would never see Melanie again. Philip had no convincing reason to doubt that he was going to be guillotined. His knees felt weak as he was pushed, stumbling, this way and that.

The people who had come to load the tumbrils for the day were cursing and fretting over their lists. 'Where is the Englishman, Percy Blakeney? Name of a dog, but he is not here!'

'But here is at least one of the foreigners, who will not escape us!'

The combined effects of seduction, alcohol, and anxiety on Radcliffe rendered him semiconscious before his trip to the scaffold actually got started.

The streets of Paris, and their jeering crowds, went by him as in a dream. Constantia had vanished, as dream-creatures were compelled to do in sunlight.

A wave of despair washed over him. Madness, all madness, and he had betrayed his true love, Melanie, for the embrace of a satanic enchantress. Three weeks and I will be in London… and he had allowed himself to be convinced. What hollow nonsense, before the reality of the tall cart, and his bound wrists!

He saw now, with unbearable clarity, that Constantia's pledges were fantasies, were lies, and he, Philip Radcliffe, had thrown away his life, clinging to a hope that could be no more than sheer insanity…

Radcliffe, mind spinning with the aftermath of brandy and exhaustion, jammed in among the sweating, trembling bodies of the other scheduled victims of the day, rode the jolting tumbril through the streets, with his hands already tied behind him, and his shirt torn open at the collar, and arrived at the Place de la Revolution to play his part in the great show.

The carpenter, Duplay, had only recently finished shaping and planing and sanding the wooden blade, of stout, tough oak, which Radu had ordered. Duplay had added a dark stain, which succeeded in making the finished product look almost like metal. The bladesof la mechanique were changed fairly frequently, and it seemed unlikely that onlookers would pay this one any particular attention.

Radu had secretly arranged with one of the younger Sansons for its substitution in the death machine, on the proper day. And when that day came and the wooden blade was used, on a converted Philip or even a tricky Vlad, Radu was determined to be in the audience watching. The victim's head, vampire or not, was going to come cleanly off, and Radu would not have missed that sight for anything.

Philip Radcliffe thought that he and the Reaper had been on intimate terms for some time now. He had a fleeting impression of familiarity when he looked into the face of Death, in the form of Sanson's powerful assistant.

And Philip, his hands now tied behind his back, with no sane reason in the world to expect anything but a dramatic passage out of the world within the next few seconds, was sent stumbling forward across the little platform. The long arms of the taller executioner reached out, and his hands seized Philip Radcliffe in a grip as tight as that of Death.

Chapter Twenty-Four

'Where's your husband?' The questioning voice issued almost calmly from inside the monstrously lugubrious