Where he sees, framed between its moth-worn curtains, another woman's face appear: a porcelain-smooth girl's mask peering out from the darkness behind the cracked glass, grub-pale in the shadows of this supposedly unoccupied apartment. It hangs there, pale and empty as a wax head from Citizen Curtuis's museum — that studio where images of decapitated friend and foe to France alike are modelled from casts taken by his 'niece' Marie, the Grosholtz girl, who will one day abandon Curtuis to the mob he serves and marry another man for passage to England. Where she will set up her own museum, exhibiting the results of her skills under the fresh new name of Madame Tussaud.
That white face. Those dim-hued eyes. Features once contemptuously regal, now possessed of nothing but a dull and uncomplaining patience. The same wide stare which will meet Jean-Guy's, after the raid, from atop the grisly burden of Dumouriez's overcrowded pallet. That proud aristo, limbs flopped carelessly askew, her nude skin dappledlike that of every one of her fellow victims
(like Jean-Guy's own brow now, in 1815, as he studies that invisible point on the wall where the stain of Dumouriez's escape once hung, dripping)
with bloody sweat.
His 'old complaint', he called it, during that brief evening's consultation with Doctor Keynes. A cyclic, tidal flux, regular as breath, unwelcome as nightmare, constantly calling and recalling a blush, or more, to his unwilling skin.
And he wonders, Jean-Guy, just as he wondered then: why look at all? Why bother to hide herself, if only to brave the curtain periodically and offer her unmistakable face to the hostile street outside?
But
'You aristos,' he remembers muttering while the chevalier listened, courteously expressionless. 'All, so arrogant.'
'Yes, Citizen.'
'Like that girl. The one'
'At Dumouriez's window? Oh, no doubt.'
'But how' Struggling manfully against his growing lassitude, determined to place the reference in context: 'How could you know ?'
And the chevalier, giving his version of La Hire's shrug, all sleek muscle under fine scarlet velvet.
'But I simply do , Citizen Sansterre.'
Adding, in a whisper — a hum? That same hum, so close and quiet against the down of Jean-Guy's paralyzed cheek, which seems to vibrate through every secret part of him at once whenever the blood still kept sequestered beneath his copper-ruddy mixed-race flesh begins to flow
For who do you think it was who told her to look out, in the first place?
In Martinique — with money and time at his disposal, and a safe distance put between himself and that Satanic, red-lined coach — Jean-Guy had eventually begun to make certain discreet enquiries into the long and secretive history of the family Prendegrace. Thus employed, he soon amassed a wealth of previously hidden information: facts impossible to locate during the Revolution, or even before.
Like picking at a half-healed scab, pain and relief in equal measure; and since, beyond obviously, he would never be fully healed, what did it matter just what Jean-Guy's enquiries managed to uncover?
Chevalier Joffroi d'Iver, first of his line, won his nobility on crusade under Richard Coeur-de-Lion, for services rendered during the massacre at Acre. An old story: reluctant to lose the glory of having captured 300 infidels in battle — though aware that retaining them would prevent any further advancement towards his true prize, the holy city of Jerusalem — the hot-blooded Plantagenet ordered each and every one of them decapitated on the spot. So scaffolds were built, burial pits dug, and heads and bodies sent tumbling in either direction for three whole days, while swords of d'Iver and his companions swung ceaselessly, and a stream of fresh victims slipped in turn on the filth their predecessors had left behind.
And after their task was done, eye-witnesses record, these good Christian knights filled the pits with Greek fire, leaving the bodies to burn, as they rode away.
Much as, during your own famous Days of September , a familiar voice seems to murmur at Jean-Guy's ear, 378 of those prisoners awaiting trial at the Conciergerie were set upon by an angry horde of good patriots like yourself, and hacked limb from limb in the street .
Eyes closed, Jean-Guy recalls a gaggle of women running by red-handed, reeling drunk — with clusters of ears adorning their open, fichu-less bodices. Fellow citizens clapping and cheering from the drawn-up benches as a man wrings the Princess de Lamballe's still-beating heart dry over a goblet, then takes a long swig of the result, toasting the health of the Revolution in pale aristo blood. All those guiding lights of liberty: ugly Georges Danton, passionate Camille Desmoulins
Maximilien Robespierre himself, in his Incorruptible's coat of sea-green silk, nearsighted cat's eyes narrowed against the world through spectacles with smoked-glass lenses; the kind one might wear, even today, to protect oneself while observing an eclipse.
La Famille Prend-de-grace, moving to block out the sun; a barren new planet, passing restless through a dark new sky. And their arms, taken at the same time an axe argent et gules , over a carrion field, gules seulement .
A bloodstained weapon, suspended — with no visible means of support — above a field red with severed heads.
We could not have been more suited to each other, you and I. Could we
— Citizen?
1793
Blood and filth, and the distant rumble of passing carts; the hot mist turns to sizzling rain, as new waves of stench eddy and shift around them. Dumouriez rounds the corner into the Row of the Armed Man, and La Hire and Jean-Guy exchange a telling glance: the plan of attack, as previously determined. La Hire will take the back way, past where the prostitute lurks, while Jean-Guy waits under a convenient awning — to keep his powder dry — until
