“What’s taking so long?” Hebert called out to Tussaud, who was just recovering her senses. “We haven’t got all day.” He was sharing a bottle of wine with his committee members-one of whom still sported the white feather in his cap. Its tip was now scarlet, and Sant’Angelo knew perfectly well how it had come by its color.
“Even now, this queen keeps everyone waiting,” the man with the bloody feather quipped, and everyone laughed.
“We’ll have to put that in the paper,” Hebert said. “Make a note of it, Jerome.”
The third man, with the ink-stained hands of a printer, said, “I won’t forget.”
The young Tussaud swallowed hard and looked at the head on the cloth, and even if she knew that this was no longer the head of the queen, she knew enough to say nothing. Bewildered, she draped the damp muslin cloth over the face, spread an even coat of plaster, and after allowing it to dry, pried the mask loose and laid it in her basket, covered with a scrap of cotton. Brushing her hands clean on her skirts, she stood up and said to Hebert, “I am done here, Citizen.”
“It’s about time,” he replied, strapping on the sword he had laid on the grass. “I’ve got a newspaper to get out.” He slapped his tricornered hat back on his head.
“Tomorrow’s edition should be a sellout,” the head gravedigger predicted, in his most unctuous tones.
“I’m going to write the whole issue myself,” Hebert announced, snapping his fingers at Tussaud, who was struggling to gather up all her things. “Octave, go help her, for God’s sake, or we’ll never get back to the office.”
When they had gone, Sant’Angelo waited, as silent witness and friend, until the gravediggers threw all that was left of the queen’s remains into the open pit. Without the head, he was relieved to see, life was at last extinguished. Using the bottom of his boot, the head gravedigger tipped the barrel of quicklime over on top of the bodies, waiting for the brew to sizzle and hiss its way through the carnage. Then, as they started to shovel the dirt in after, the marquis turned and went to exact his revenge.
Sant’Angelo, like everyone in Paris, knew where Le Pere Duchesne was published, and he waited outside for many hours, watching Hebert at a desk above the printing press, writing in full view of passersby. Page after page flew off his desk, written in the earthy, lewd voice of the titular character, depicted as an angry peasant with a pipe between his teeth. The marquis also caught glimpses of Jerome and Octave, setting type, cranking the press, reading proofs.
When the work was finally done, it was almost midnight, and they adjourned to celebrate at what was once the barracks of the Swiss Guard. But now that the entire Guard had been slaughtered in defense of the royal family, it was called the Tavern of the Guillotine, and it offered an unequaled view of the scaffold; on the back of the menu each day there was a list of the people to be executed.
The marquis, still wearing the garland, sat at a table outside, listening to their boisterous laughter as Hebert read aloud passages from the next day’s paper.
“When the widow Capet saw that she had traded a coach-and-four for a dung cart, she stamped her pretty little foot and demanded that someone answer for it.”
And then, “With the rudeness for which the bitch was widely known, she purposely trod on the foot of Monsieur Le Paris”-as the executioner was commonly known-“and would have thrown a proper fit if she’d only been able to keep her wits, and her head, about her.”
It went on like that for well over an hour, but the marquis used that time to stoke his anger and resolve. He rested the harpe, an exact duplicate of the sword he had fashioned for the hand of his Perseus, against the knee of his cassock.
And when the Chief of the Committee of Public Safety-and publisher of the scurrilous paper-emerged, again with his two accomplices, Sant’Angelo followed them. They were going, he soon realized, to the Conciergerie, perhaps to select some more victims for the next day. The streets were dark and grew damp as they approached the banks of the Seine. The lower level of the prison, where the pailleux were confined like cattle in a pen, looked out, through a grating of iron bars, onto a walkway that ran along the river. It was the only air that penetrated the dreadful caverns. But the path was narrow and at that hour no one was around, except for the prisoners who saw Hebert through the bars. Most of them were silent as he passed-many had been denounced and sentenced by this very man-but a few could not restrain themselves and reached out their arms to plead for mercy or beg for a chance to argue their innocence one last time. Their frightened faces, grimy with sweat and tears, glistened in the torchlight from within the cells.
The marquis would not get a better opportunity. Moving up swiftly behind the printer Jerome, he whispered in his ear, “Wouldn’t you like to wash that ink off your hands?”
The man whirled around and saw only the slick cobblestones shining in the moonlight. But he shouted, “Who’s there?” and Hebert and Octave, who was still sporting the bloodstained feather in his cap, turned around.
“What are you shouting about? Can’t you see that these people need their rest?” Hebert said with a laugh.
An elderly prisoner called out to him, “Citizen Hebert-a word, I beg you-just one word!”
“There was someone right here,” the printer insisted. “He just spoke to me.”
“And what did he say?” Octave asked, smirking.
“He asked… if I wanted to wash the ink off.”
And then, before Hebert or Octave could make some rejoinder, the marquis grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him, his boots scuffing wildly at the stones, to the stone parapet above the riverfront.
“Help me!” the printer screamed. “Help me!”
With a mighty shove, Sant’Angelo sent him toppling over the wall. There was a loud splash as he plunged into the Seine.
Octave and Hebert ran to the parapet, staring down into the swiftly flowing stream, but there was no sign of him. Octave drew a pistol from his belt, and Hebert pulled his rapier from its scabbard.
But they could see nothing, and no one, to fight.
The marquis slipped behind Octave. The sound of his boots was swallowed by the cries of the prisoners, many more of whom were now pressed against the bars, their hands clutching the grate, their eyes bulging with wonder. Whatever strange miracle was occurring outside their bars, they wholeheartedly approved.
“So, you like your souvenirs?” Sant’Angelo murmured as he ripped the bloody feather from Octave’s cap.
He made the feather bob and dance in the empty air, until Octave took a wild shot at it. The marquis felt the heat of the bullet as it passed below his arm. Then he raised his sword and, in one fell swoop, sliced the man’s hand off altogether.
Still clutching the pistol, the hand fell, and Octave didn’t seem to understand what had just happened. He stood stock-still, looking down at his own spurting wrist, before suddenly howling in pain, wedging the stump under his armpit and fleeing down the concourse.
The prisoners, delighted with the show so far, banged on the bars with tin spoons and closed fists.
The chief backed away, his sword probing the darkness in every direction.
“Where are you?” Hebert cried out. “Who are you?”
But for this last act, the marquis did not want to be invisible. He wanted Hebert to know who was about to kill him. Taking off the garland, he slowly came into view, like an image coalescing from the moonbeams themselves.
“The priest?” Hebert said.
The black cassock whipped around Sant’Angelo’s legs, blown by the wind from the river. The bloody sword glittered at his side.
“Guards!” Hebert shouted at the top of his lungs. “Guards!”
Wordlessly, the marquis moved closer.
Hebert swung wildly with his rapier, all the while retreating, but when a blow came close enough, Sant’Angelo parried it with the edge of his own sword. The clang of the steel rang out through the night air.
The prisoners shouted, “Kill him, Father! Kill him!”
Hebert’s tricornered hat fell from his head and blew along the stones. His face was white with terror, and suddenly he found himself so close to the bars that the frenzied hands of the inmates were clutching at his sleeves
